Page 89 - Classic Rock (January 2020)

sugaring the justified bitterness North Londoners have never spectacle, however, their basic
is Tate’s melodic flair, and the made any pretentions to musical ethos – pounding, bass- BEST OF THE REST
production doffs its hat to the reinventing the wheel. Instead driven punk brutalism delivered
West Coast sheen of late- they elect to re-tread the tyre beneath a banner of love, Other new releases out this month.
period Hole. to hit the open road for more compassion and unity – comes
This is uneasy listening, but all open-top fun. Frenetic originals into its own, particularly when Deux Furieuses
credit to Tate for smashing the Oofty Goofty and Bayou Fever are recorded in Le Bataclan, a venue My War Is Your War XTRA MILE
patriarchy one song at a time. teeth-grinding joys designed to with its own powerful stamp of With a widescreen political vision and vast, spacious sound, vocalist/
QQQQQQQQQQ keep the party going until the solidarity. So Talbot’s cries of guitarist Ros Cairney and drummer Vas Antonaidou’s edgier, antsier
Julian Marszalek neighbours complain, while ‘I am a feminist’, ‘Love yourself’ second album boasts the direct ferocity of Dry-era PJ Harvey.
Exceptional. 8/10
cracking covers of Cecil Moore and ‘This snowflake is an
Voyager And The Diamond Backs’ avalanche!’ pierce the dark
Colours In The Sun Stormy and Bud Mathis And thunder of Mother, Television Wives
So Removed CITY SLANG
SEASON OF MIST The Fairviews’ surf obscurity and poverty-power anthem
Like a heavy-lidded Velvet Underground or a heavily sedated Jon
The final abbreviated Discumboober tell you exactly I’m Scum with added punch and Spencer Blues Explosion, Wives ooze malignant NYC cool from every
countdown where King Salami And The clarity, and the deconstructions pore. Spiky Sonic Youth metallics, grooves that only slouch. Attitude
For their Cumberland Three are of societal machismo laid out on ice. 8/10
seventh album, coming from. in Colossus, Samaritans (‘I’m

Australian QQQQQQQQQQ a real boy, boy, and I cry’) and Birdeatsbaby
prog rockers Julian Marszalek ballroom blitz Cry To Me gain The World Conspires EDEL
Voyager have significance in a room still Produced by John Fryer (NIN, Mode) , this fifth from the increasingly
pressed the 80s rewind button Denner’s Inferno thrumming with grief. metallic, Brighton-based dark proggers comfortably inhabits fresh
and then doubled down on the In Amber MIGHTY MUSIC Playing virtually their entire soundscapes. Expansive ambitions, string-driven psychodramas and
(in Painkiller) a stone-cold classic. 8/10
reverb. The result is banks of Denner shows off his 70s recorded catalogue might
intensely echoed tingling album collection. highlight the repetitive pace, Warmduscher
synthesisers welling up as if For a guitarist and that immigration fist-raiser
Tainted Lunch LEAF
from the bottom of an empty to dub his new Danny Nedelko and Well Done
Blood-Sugared pervoid disco-funk-metal, haunted by the spectre of Jon
swimming pool, and familiar- band an are their only world-beating
Spencer. Stately subterraneans Iggy Pop and Kool Keith guest, deviant
sounding, generic power-pop ‘inferno’ implies bangers thus far, but in the
grooves cut deep, raw tales blaze. You’ll feel dirty. In a good way. 8/10
anthems shimmering in the heroic levels of furious righteousness stakes
audio haze and sung with shredding. But that isn’t what this is unbeatable. Lesbian Bed Death
swaggering retro panache by we’ve got here. Best known for QQQQQQQQQQ Born To Die On VHS PSYCHOPHONIC
Danny Estrin. If you can conjure his time with Mercyful Fate and Mark Beaumont LBD’s sixth features returning original singer Luci4 and various horror
up visions of a garish light show King Diamond, Denner’s metallic flick covers (Ramones’ Pet Sematary, 45 Grave’s Partytime). Which
piercing billowing clouds of dry prowess is legendary, although Mike Zito probably seemed like a pretty good idea in the pub. 5/10
ice, so much the better. In Amber is focused largely on & Friends
It all works well for the first his love of 70s hard rock, with Rock’n’Roll: A Tribute Anthony Phillips
half of the album – up to and a bit of progginess thrown in too. To Chuck Berry RUF Strings Of Light ESOTERIC ANTENNA
including a duet with Einar Loser, Matriarch and Sometimes Bonamassa and Trout help This first album in seven years from the founding Genesis guitarist
Solberg from Leprous on bring to mind bands such as honour the original guitar god. delivers 24 instrumental compositions in stereo and 5.1. Clever,
Entropy. After that the well of UFO – tight and melodic with an Fellow St. Louis- dextrous stuff, but significantly more Tales Of The Riverbank than Trick
Of The Tail. 6/10
anthemic melodies dries up ace six-stringer at the front born blues star
and the band resort to alongside a punchy vocalist, in Zito chose 20 Deaf Rat
thunderous electro beats this case Chandler Mogel guitarists to
Ban The Light AFM
instead as a distraction. But that (Punky Meadows, Outloud). The duet with on
Carrying off the difficult beards-‘n’-eyeliner look, Swedish hard rockers
only works for a couple of tracks, stand-out track is surely Fountain this exemplary selection of Berry
Deaf Rat (gotta love a language barrier) walk/swagger/stagger a fine
and the album limps to a loud Of Grace, mostly because it hits and deep cuts, and the riffs line between 80s W.A.S.P. and 90s Alice. Big-ass tunes? Check. 7/10
but empty ending. sounds like Candlemass, while remain mighty. But what really
QQQQQQQQQQ the rest of the album doesn’t. registers are rock’s first great Revival Black
Hugh Fielder Defintely scorching, then, but lyrics, which combine piquant Step In Line CARGO
not an inferno. southern blues details with their Liverpool’s RB, formerly Black Cat Bones, boast a tidy take on
King Salami And QQQQQQQQQQ reconfiguring for white teenage 70s-informed classic rock. An Alan Rimmer/Adam Kerbache dual
The Cumberland Essi Berelian consumption (see No Particular guitar front line soar in support of Dan Byrne’s emotive, power-
Three Place To Go’s cars and girls). incarnate lead vocals. 7/10
IDLES
Kiss My Ring DAMAGED GOODS Zito’s raw Missouri voice and Tainted Lady
Primal rock’n’roll served from A Beautiful Thing: IDLES rowdily direct playing are just Sounds Like Freedom // Feels Like War
the primordial soup. Live At Le Bataclan PARTISAN right, as Walter Trout helps
PRIME COLLECTIVE
Although they Rampaging Bristolian serenade the mythic guitar Displaying enough testicular fortitude and technical chops to rock out
mighty lack the righteousness in the home hero Johnny B Goode, a country with their cock out all the way to the bank, TL (five male Danes)
surprise of of solidarity. boy who keeps his instrument demonstrate genre-transcending sophistication inexplicable in a band
a firecracker IDLES gigs are ‘in a gunny sack’. From the uncle so atrociously named. 7/10
going off a visceral visual scrawling Chuck’s lost love’s
under your chair – this is their experience: number ‘on the wall’ in Memphis, Wolfbrigade
fourth album, after all – the lupine frontman to the guitars that roar him The Enemy: Reality SOUTHERN LORD
cranked-up ramalama of Joe Talbot ‘right across Mississippi clear’ Wolfbrigade deal in ‘Lycanthro Punk’. Which, we’re told, combines
unreconstructed rhythm’n’blues bawling and barking out his during Promised Land’s rapid Swedish hardcore and death metal, but which combines Killing Joke
rockers King Salami And The social injustices and below-the- American odyssey, this is the and Motörhead if Geordie and Lemmy had only been a guitar player
and bassist. 6/10
Cumberland Three creates breadline portraits, while brilliant blueprint for everything
pretty much the same effect. guitarist Mark Bowen strips to from Springsteen’s more Pamela Sue Mann
Theirs is a world where The his grundies and freaks out like questioning but otherwise
Break MANIAC SQUAT
Beatles are still bottom of the bill a deranged Dalston tramp – slavishly borrowed Americana
Deliciously uncomfortable intimacy, keyed dreamscapes, warm
at the Indra Club in Hamburg, that’ll be him ranting through to Wilko Johnson’s provincially
synthetic rhythms. There’s a seductive hypnotic quality to Mann’s
and prellies and beer are the two minutes of feedback at the precise Canvey blues. diaphonous signature vocal and otherworldly sound palette. Arty,
breakfast of champions. end of anti-fascist finale QQQQQQQQQQ avant, ambient. An alt.pop joy. 8/10
But then again, the rip-roaring Rottweiler. Without the Nick Hasted

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