Sounds From The Junkshop #12 - The Almighty

 

"You're just chokin' on your Coca-Cola/Chokin' on your dreams..." - The Almighty, Jonestown Mind, 1994

After a few more indie-leaning columns, this week sees Sounds From The Junkshop return to heavier territory. The Almighty were a band I first became aware of after seeing the video to their second single Wild And Wonderful on the ITV Chart Show Rock Chart. Listening to it now, it's pretty obvious that the main influences were Motorhead, the Cult circa Electric and AC/DC. As a 12-year-old, of course, I wasn't quite in a position to put all the pieces of that jigsaw into place (I knew of AC/DC through the awesome Thunderstruck single and video of course and might have been aware of the Cult via Fire Woman a year or two earlier but I was a year or two away from discovering Lemmy and co when a re-released Ace of Spades stormed into the Top 30) but what I did know was that there was something undeniably anthemic about that "C'mon honey and show me something WILD! WILD AND WONDERFUL!" chorus. Just like the way all decent rock music should, that hook sunk its claws into your brain and then bludgeoned it home with all the subtlety of a ten pound hammer.

Although they were initially lumped in with the British end of hair metal in the early '90s, the Almighty were always a bit heavier and nastier than most of their compatriots in that scene and ultimately I think that's what proved to be a key factor in why they managed to outlast nearly all of the competition. As much as I liked the Quireboys, the fact that their influences lay in the early '70s rock of the Faces and the Stones meant they were always likely to be a bit vulnerable to the “year zero” mentality of the grunge invasion of '91-'92, ditto the yawnsome blues-rock of Thunder and the enjoyable but wilfully OTT glam of Tigertailz while the sheer self-destructive tendencies of the Dogs D'Amour meant it was probably a bit of a miracle that they managed to even get through to that era in the first place.

However, like I say, the Almighty were made of leaner and meaner stuff and weren't about to let some group of miserable buggers in flannel tank their career. They'd sort of drift in and out of my musical listening from 1990-93 with second album Soul Destruction being pretty much a straight continuation of their awesome biker metal debut Blood, Fire And Love and giving them their first two Top 40 hits Free 'n' Easy and Devil's Toy (the latter being the first single of theirs I actually bought) and keeping up the high quality of that classic. However, they clearly sensed the winds of change were blowing across the rock scene and 1993 saw them, following a change of guitarist (former Alice Cooper man Pete Friesen replacing original six stringer Tantrum), take a turn down the grunge route for the Powertrippin' album.

Powertrippin' was the first Almighty album I heard (a mate of mine copied it on tape for me after borrowing it from his metalhead older brother) and, hand on heart, I wasn't a big fan of it. Even now I'd still say it falls a bit behind the first two quality wise, as if the band were trying to chase trends rather than concentrate on what they were good at as evidenced on the sludgy Addiction or the Alice In Chains soundalike Out Of Season. There's the odd exception - Over The Edge was a good frenetic single which tapped into the urgency of old and the acoustic led Jesus Loves You (But I Don't) is still one of the best songs the band did, a slow building tirade of anger against organised religion. It's six minutes long but sounds much shorter which is always a good sign.

Overall though, I think my main problem with Powertrippin' was, and still is, that it just doesn't sound like you want the Almighty to sound, as if they're trying to be too serious and miserable when they should be firing up those Harley engines and letting 'em blast. Which makes what came next all the more impressive and was the point where I properly got back into them.

Hands up, I'd kind of lost interest in the Almighty after Powertrippin' and hadn't really thought much about them until I read in Kerrang! one week that Andy Cairns of one of my then-favourite bands Therapy? was guesting on their new album (Therapy? and the Almighty were good friends and frequently toured together before the former went supernova with Screamager). My interest was piqued but not quite enough to buy the comeback single Wrench. More fool me because it gave them their biggest hit to date, blasting into the Top 30 and earning them a Top of the Pops performance. I remember watching it and my jaw pretty much hitting the living room floor. The grunge trend chasing was pretty comprehensively gone for this with the group taking their early sound and moving it forward to the mid-'90s by making it several times heavier. By the time the brutally vicious Jonestown Mind single followed it into the Top 30 and earned them a second TOTP performance, I think it's safe to say I'd forgiven them for Powertrippin' and was happily back on board.

I bought Crank, the parent album, after seeing the Jonestown Mind TOTP performance and this to me is where the band really nailed moving their sound forward. I know a few people said at the time after hearing Wrench that the band were now ripping off Pantera but really, I think that's the only track here that you could maybe say that about. And fuck it, that brutal cement mixer riff is something Dimebag would’ve been happy to call his own I reckon. If anything, the group were setting themselves up nicely as the elder statesmen of Britrock (my "road to Damascus" moment of seeing the Wildhearts, another band who'd supported the Almighty on their way up a year or so previously, doing Geordie In Wonderland on TOTP came just a couple of weeks after the Almighty did Jonestown Mind on there) and the likes of The Unreal Thing, Crank And Deceit and Way Beyond Belief married Ricky Warwick's ferociously angry lyrics (supposedly a lot of the songs on Crank were written following the breakdown of his marriage to former MTV VJ Vanessa Warwick) with a band sounding supremely tight. It's not often remarked about the Almighty but feck me, these guys could play. Drummer Stump in particular often sounded as if he was trying to cram four beats in for every one and the sheer fury of his playing style really helped to elevate the songs beyond the standard Britrock fare especially with Floyd London's heavy but tight bass playing comprising the other half of the rhythm section. Warwick and Friesen, meanwhile were two undoubtedly skilled guitarists who also had that crucial inbuilt knowledge of when to rein things in to prevent the whole thing sinking into Joe Bonamassa-style tedious fretwankery and Warwick's Lemmy style growl rounded the whole thing off perfectly.

With their chart positions at the highest they'd ever been and a group of similar new bands on the up who could probably claim Ricky and the lads as an influence, the world really should have been the Almighty's for the taking in 1995-96. Certainly I saw them at Bradford St George's Hall on the Crank tour in the dying days of '94 and they absolutely killed it. Unfortunately it didn't quite work out like that and their next album Just Add Life was another mis-step. They'd been hanging out with the Ruts (one of my favourite punk bands) which should have been a good thing but somehow the collision of styles with the group aiming for a punkier sound just didn't really work with the end result sounding closer to a Brit version of American Idiot era Green Day (although thankfully minus the overblown ten minute mini-operas) Although All Sussed Out and Do You Understand? scraped the Top 40, the album fared poorly compared to its predecessors and by the end of the year the group would have been dropped and split up.

The split wouldn't last long though and by 2000 the group would have reformed minus Friesen whose place was taken by Nick Parsons formerly of Britrock almost-weres Whatever (and who'd also been in Danny McCormack's pre-Wildhearts band Energetic Krusher). This line-up put out two albums, a self-titled 2000 effort and 2001's Psycho-Narco (which saw Floyd replaced on bass by Gav Gray). Unfortunately neither was really up their with the band's best with the occasional good moment and a lot of stuff that can best be described as "filler" although it didn't stop me going to see them at Rio's on the Psycho-Narco tour where they gave a good account of themselves - certainly Parsons and Gray seemed to have settled in well and the band were sounding good and tight even if the new material was a bit anonymous compared to the older stuff. Shortly afterwards though, the band would split again with Warwick embarking on a solo career which saw him unleash his more melodic side to generally good effect - certainly his Tattoos And Alibis album was arguably the strongest thing he'd put his name to since Crank and I was lucky enough to see him play Donington (oh go on then, Download if you really must) the following year where he put in a good showing. 2005's Love Many Trust Few and 2008's Belfast Confetti were strong efforts as well and it looked as though the Almighty were firmly a thing of the past at this point.

However, 2009 brought the news that Floyd London was suffering from leukaemia and the group would reform to do some benefit gigs for him. These went so well that even after he'd beaten the disease (or "kicked its arse!" as Warwick would announce when I saw the band put on a great show in Leeds the following year), the group decided to stick around. Unfortunately, before any new material could be forthcoming, Warwick and London fell out again and the band went back on hold. Shortly afterwards, Warwick was offered the singer's job in the reformed Thin Lizzy, which would subsequently mutate into Black Star Riders, and that's pretty much kept him busy ever since.

I saw Ricky fronting Thin Lizzy at the Ramblin' Man Festival in Maidstone a few years ago and was genuinely apprehensive - it takes a hell of a lot of courage to step into the god-sized shoes of Phil Lynott but fair play to the guy, he pulled it off well. As anyone who's heard any of the four Black Star Riders albums to date will tell you as well, songs like God, Guns and Gasoline and Thinking About You Could Get Me Killed show that he's lost none of the fire in his songwriting either and with an ace guitarist like Scott Gorham backing him up, he's certainly found a decent niche for himself. The boy done good.

I dunno if we'll ever see another Almighty reunion to be honest - I read in an interview with Ricky that the four of them are getting on again and that he'd be up for it schedules permitting but I guess we'll have to wait and see. However, their legacy, despite the odd mis-step, is still a pretty solid one and they deserve a lot of credit for being one of the few bands who came up in the hair metal era who not only surfed the waves through grunge and into Britrock but actually became more popular in doing so. Certainly, Blood, Fire And Love, Soul Destruction and Crank are all essential listening in my book and even the lesser albums all have a few stellar moments on them. Dig out yer leathers, grab some scratchings and a pint of whatever cures yer ailments and enjoy.