Album Review: Massive Wagons - "House Of Noise"

 

Now on their fourth album, it's safe to say that life is very much ticking on the same as it always did in the world of Lancaster rockers Massive Wagons. In that they still sound as if they've pretty much teleported straight into this timeline from a Scorpions support slot circa 1978. When singer Baz yells "Maybe I'm old before my years" on opening track In It Together you can't help but roll your eyes at the irony of it all.

To be fair, I always feel it's a bit unfair to peg Massive Wagons as a bunch of derivative retro-merchants as they at least show a lot more energy and enthusiasm in going about their craft than the detestable likes of Greta Van Fleet, Black Stone Cherry et al but at the same time it's difficult to shift the feeling when you listen to them that they're only one falsetto vocal away from essentially being a bunch of Darkness clones. And as much as I like the Darkness, cornball humour in rock 'n' roll is something that it's very easy to overdose on if you aren’t careful.

The good things about House of Noise - it does at least have a similar amount of riffed up power and aggro as the group's previous effort Full Nelson which was their strongest to date and the likes of Professional Creep and Bangin' In Your Stereo are decent efforts. The bad things - unfortunately like I say, there comes a point where the whole lack of originality thing just becomes impossible to ignore especially if there isn't a really killer standout tune there to transcend the obvious influences and put the band's own stamp on them. Essentially House Of Noise sounds like a Terrorvision B-sides album - plenty of effort and graft but it’s sorely missing a Pretend Best Friend or a Perseverance to lift it above average. Or, put it another way, if Terrorvision, the Wildhearts and the Darkness are the Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea of Britrock and groups like the Black Spiders and Baby Chaos represent solid established Premiership sides like say Newcastle or Southampton then Massive Wagons are more like a Derby County or Huddersfield Town - solid enough to manage the odd season competing with the big boys but you could never see them being any sort of threat to the pecking order. 

Like I say, I do feel a bit guilty about writing Massive Wagons off as an idea-free zone as they certainly have the enthusiasm to at least partly compensate for the lack of originality which is more than a few bands of their ilk do. But they really need to cut loose and bring some genuinely original ideas to this whole formula soon (and by that I very much don't mean writing joke songs about curry or coming up with cringingly bad sub-Quiet Riot song titles like Hallescrewya) or else they're gonna end up being pegged as a novelty band. And for their energy alone, they owe themselves better than that.

Should you be so inclined, you can stream or download House of Noise from the Massive Wagons Bandcamp page.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌓🌓🌓🌓🌓🌓🌑🌑🌑🌑 (6/10)