Fractured
No Peace For The Wicked
Raucous

First time CD, and slick digi-pack at that, issue for this, the only album from neo-rockabilly burn-outs Fractured, originally issued in 1987. Favourites at the infamous London psychobilly night Klub Foot in the early to mid eighties, primarily because their Restless-esque neo-stylings were played so fast, even on record, never mind live, which is represented here by their, yup, speed ‘n’ spesh ultra-blur brew-spew on Big John. On the evidence of the frantic lothario of Honest Lovin’, Dark Blue Sea, the lurching, leering Gene Vincent swing through folk-staple Kisses Sweeter Than Wine and Gamblin’ Man that some will know from the Klub Foot compilation series, it’s a shame they had such a scant recording history.

- Stu Gibson

Flesh
Resurrection
Raucous

Shouldst ye be harkening after more dark-hearted horror/ghoul/vampabilly theatrics then along come Canadians Flesh, fronted by the aforely-mentioned femme fatale, the vamp after your vitals Lili Sweet. Maybe you’ve had your fill of The Horrorpops and fellow Candian grave-raiders The Creepshow but don’t write off this set of silver-bullet proof B-Movie schlock devotees and devourers at midnight’s melee with too much haste. Sure, this may sound like it was actually recorded in a crypt that’s caving in ceiling-first after they unwittingly set off a centuries old curse that forbids such frightfully pernicious past-times. The saturated guitar sound ricochets around with the haphazardness of anguished ghouls though after an initial frown of distaste does mutate into resembling Nosferatu’s fingers scraping the wall on the follow through from slicing through someone’s pleasingly pulsating carotid. With some dawn-rise defying song-writing acting as the pillar to withhold the collapsing castle the virulent bass is the sloth-footed stomp of some particularly zealous zombie and the drums pounded out on a full civilisation of dead men’s chests herald the onset of delirious, dusky darkness that songs such as Learning How To Live and Are You Restless? merely act as quickeners for.

- Stu Gibson

Black Sabbath
The Dio Years
Warner Bros. / Rhino

Sabbaths post-Ozwald eon may be viewed as some kind of wilderness period where an increasingly isolated Tony Iommi recruited a seemingly endless and ever random rodeo of past-it and never had it musicians to try and recreate the spells of old. Before the rot really took hold and ran as wild as Ozzy on a coke and booze binge in Boise, however, the stars and planets aligned to aid some alchemy amid the more mundane metallurgy of the times, in the form of ex-Rainbow singer Ronnie James Dio. Coincidentally then, as the title implies, this compiles the essentials of the albums this line-up heralded the 1980s with – namely Heaven And Hell, Mob Rules and Live Evil – (as opposed to being a complete collection) plus a triumvirate from 1992’s Dehumanizer and, lo and behold, three new tracks from the mighty anvil as tasters for them touring later this year under the Heaven And Hell banner. Granted, the terminally hardcore Sab-ject will get this for those new tracks, which do suggest that the Dio years could be a welcome reprise not just a one off, but pretty much anyone with even a vague interest in metal old or modern should have classics from Dio’s crystal ball and Iommi’s gargantuan, monolith-lifting, phoenix-flaming riffs like Neon Knights, Lady Evil, Turn Up The Night, Die Young and Heaven And Hell itself, that show this band more than held their own without Ozzy as well as in the face of the rising force of the NWOBHM.

- Stu Gibson

Mick Harvey
Two Of Diamonds
Mute

Bad Seed Harvey steps in with his second solo album mixing originals amidst the covers and gives a masterclass in the often necessarily much-maligned art of the cover version. Should you not be up to scratch with the source material – and don’t let that spoil your afternoon as Harvey commendably concentrates on the lesser spotted variety of bands – you could easily mistake him as the sole writer of the whole shebang. With his band featuring a couple of members there’s a subtle Bad Seed taste in the tincture, perhaps inevitably also considering he’s been Nick Cave’s backbone and bosun for the whole damn journey since The Boys Next Door. However, his extra-curricular work as a producer and especially soundtrack composer gives him far greater range than being a mere imitator of Cave, for this is the multi-instrumentalist that helms the Bad Seed vessel, lest ye forget. From an eerily languid take on soul legend Bill Withers’ I Don’t Want You On My Mind that suppurates paranoia with an almost diabiolic desperation to the sultry almost Townes Van Zandt type swirl with a tinge of Tijuana by the name of Sad Dark Eyes by so-obscure-they’re-literally-obscured Australian garage band of the 60s The Loved Ones, Harvey’s fashioned a wonderful record that, with no little feat, puts him firmly – with fetters as tight as those fate holds the protagonist of 80’s Aussie balladeers The Triffids’ Everything Is Fixed in - in the pantheon of interpreters of song with those such as Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris’, whose Here I Am is soothed out starkly here. Along with songs whose genesis lays with The Cruel Sea and The Saints there’s PJ Harvey’s as yet unreleased Slow-Motion-Movie-Star plus his own compositions Blue Arrows and, tellingly, the fairest of all these enchanting reflections – Little Star. 

- Stu Gibson

Anything After
“Little Down”/”All For This”/”Mistake”/”Not What It Seems”/”What’s With You”

I’ve gotten rather used to the pretty colours of vinyl singles, so imagine my disappointment when I received this handmade little e.p. in the mailbox, in compact disc format, replete with Sharpie inscription on the disc and song titles pencilled on the back of the paper coverslip. What do I need another coaster for?, I thought to myself. And then imagine my delight when I discovered that trapped inside the coaster were the ghosts of Jim and William Reid! Okay, it wasn’t really a lost record from my favourite dysfunctional brothers, but Anything After, a band made up of two brothers and another guy, from Downey, California, channel enough early JAMC to make my ears bleed. (I really dig it when a band can make my ears bleed.) Bloody ears, however, are not enough, and, lucky for Anything After, underneath all the fuzz and feedback lie some pretty sweet guitar melodies, some shoegazey-danceable bass-lines, and enough dreamy/desperate vocal stylings to make the indie girls cream. Somebody sign this band...              

-Holly