Nite Songs

  Hailing from Ipswich, this is Senex IV's second album and a cursory glance at the artwork here (not to mention song titles such as Dancing Witches  and Black Cat ) should be a bit of a giveaway that we are very much heading into goth territory here. And sure enough, opening track Soul Eater kicks in with a rumbling bassline, some squalling guitars and vocals which sound oddly like a cross between Peter Murphy and Mark E Smith. Not a bad start all told. While some of this album goes down the Sisters/Mission direction you'd probably expect like Drop Dead and Shadow of the Dog , songs such as The Great Idea  with its ominous piano intro before the song kicks in and the grinding bass and pounding tribal drums on Brother Grim  show that this is a band who can keep things varied enough to maintain your interest and it's this which is really Gods & Taboos ' saving grace and prevents it from plummeting into the dreaded Goth 101 territory. It's there on the way tha...

  "Truth can't be found on the television/Throwaway youth, you gotta make a stand!/Music is your only weapon/Spanners in the works, go and start your gang!"  - Lords of the New Church  - "New Church" One of THE great lost bands of the 1980s, the Lords of the New Church should have had a headstart just for the caliber of the guys involved alone. Fronting the operation was ex-Dead Boys legend Stiv Bators, on six string duties was original Damned guitarist Brian James, on bass Dave Tregunna from Sham 69 and on drums Nicky Turner from the Barracudas. Yet for some reason a chart breakthrough well and truly eluded them and they split after three awesome albums to essentially be remembered as a cult band. The group would put out three albums and all of them are well worth your while but for the definitive Lords statement, it's the debut you want. You'd maybe expect a band with the pedigree mentioned above to be a straight up Stooges style punk band with maybe ...

  "I'm getting older, I'm getting smaller, everybody tells me ya gotta walk taller"  - A , Old Folks Another late-in-the-game group to hop on the Britrock wagon just as the petrol ran out, A definitely proved themselves to be an adaptable bunch...for a bit anyway. Unfortunately they're another band who suffer from the dreaded Boo Radleys syndrome of being remembered for a song which had very little resemblance to the rest of their output. But more on that in a moment... I think I first became aware of A some time around the time of their first album How Ace Are Buildings?  as they were favourites of my younger sister and her friends. With two of the band being from Leeds (the rest hailed from the Ipswich area if I remember rightly) they used to gig around Yorkshire quite a bit and I remember at least once having to babysit my sister and her mates to one of their gigs at the free Breeze Festival. At the time I thought they were good but not great - if Symposium w...

  Much hyped at the time, I have to be honest and say that I found the sole Flaming Sideburns album that I heard during their first run, 2001's Hallelujah Rock 'n' Rollah  to be a bit of a disappointment, kind of lacking the bite of similar bands at the time like the Hellacopters, Turbonegro and Gluecifer. To be honest, the main thing I seem to remember about them rather than any of their tunes was the fact that their singer looked like a cross between Dee Dee Ramone and Ian Brown... Twenty or so years later, these Finland glam-punks are back and, much as they were back in the day, they've come back with a solid album rather than a spectacular one. However, that's not to say it's a bad effort - certainly the swaggering vocals, chugging guitars and Johnny Thunders style solos on the likes of Perfect Storm  and Cast Out My Demons  definitely tick the necessary boxes. It's just that it sounds a bit "heard it all before" compared to the sheer fury of s...

  Back after a short break, it's good to see Cheap Trick back again. The group seemed to be on a bit of a purple patch about five years ago with two great albums surfacing in the space of 12 months (2016's Bang, Zoom, Crazy...Hello  and 2017's We're All Alright! ) but have been quiet since then. However, once the pure sunshine pop of Summer Looks Good On You  kicks things into gear here, it's like they've never been away especially when it's followed up by the Kinksian stomp of  Quit Waking Me Up  and the Beatlesesque balladry of Another World . Now I've read a couple of reviews of this album which slated it on the ground that it wasn't really breaking any new ground and sure, the templates here are fairly obvious ones such as the Stonesy strut of Boys & Girls & Rock 'n' Roll  and the quite lovely Lennon-style balladry of So It Goes . But if you're one of those pencil necked geeks who've griped about this album being too obvio...

  "The mutants, creeps and musclemen are shaking like a leaf/It blows a hole in the radio when it hasn't sounded good all week"  - The Clash , Hitsville UK So after last week's Metallica entry , we're gonna be leaving the '90s alone for a little bit on Garbage Days Revisited. As I said earlier, by the time I hit my Uni years I was finally starting to get hip to music from outside my '90s timeframe. Admittedly my first tentative steps outside it were checking out bands who were often namechecked by my favourite bands - as well as Metallica's aforementioned Garage Inc  album, the Wildhearts ' evergreen ode to the bands that set Ginger on his way 29 x The Pain  was another where I was starting to look up some of these outfits like the Replacements, the Sex Pistols, Cheap Trick, the Ramones...and the Clash. The fact that Strummer and co were also frequently namechecked by another of my favourites in this era the Manic Street Preachers probably didn...

  "I'm an arsehole, I'm a fuckin' wanker 'cos I can't get to grips with what the fuck you're about..."  - Snuff  - Arsehole  (1997) I'm actually amazed it's taken me this long to get round to covering Snuff on Sounds From The Junkshop as they were a band I used to go and see a lot in my teenage years. Rising up during the pre-fraggle "grebo" period, they'd come up at the same time as Mega City Four and the Senseless Things but split in 1991 just as the two aforementioned were starting to bother the charts. Bassist Andy would go on to join Leatherface (of the classic I Want The Moon  single and Mush album) while singing drummer Dunc would move to guitar and join up with the former Soho Roses/ Wildhearts rhythm section of Jools Dean and Patrice Panache to form the excellently named Guns 'n' Wankers but the band would reunite in 1995 for a second bite of the cherry, signing to Steve Lamacq's Deceptive label (Lamacq had...

  As has often been commented, when it comes to rock 'n' roll, there's a right way and a wrong way to do things. Take this fourth album from Finnish sleaze-rockers Plastic Tears for example. It kicks in with a song called Doomsday Girls  which is all frenetic guitars, Mike Monroe style vocals and a bit of honky tonk piano scattered in there for good measure and you're instantly thinking "ah yes, these guys get it." Second song Riot Zone  couldn't be more Hanoi inspired if it tried right down to the reggaefied middle section but it carries it off with such an energetic swagger that you're prepared to forgive it - indeed, this could easily pass itself off as a great missing out-take from Back To Mystery City  or similar. Unfortunately Clash In The Night and Look Of Lies  are a bit unremarkable by comparison (despite an interesting acoustic intro on the former which turns out to be a bit of a false alarm as it turns into a more mid-paced chugalong), more ...

  Hailing from Norway, this is the third album from glam-punks the Razorbats. The group have been slowly making some progress to getting an audience over here despite a less-than-stable line-up (the two guitarists are the only remaining members from their 2013 debut album Camp Rock ) so how does Mainline Rock 'n' Roll  stack up given its decidedly troubled genesis. Well, the initial signs aren't good - the band the group remind me of more than anything on the opening duo of Rock 'n' Roll Kills  and former single Working For The Weekend  are poodle-rockers Europe. There's plenty of tunefulness and glossy production on here but somehow it just feels a bit over-produced and lacking the bite that similar groups like the Hellacopters or Turbonegro do. I think maybe I went into this album with the wrong preconceptions and once you start to get your head around Razorbats as being less akin to the scuzzy likes of the Backyard Babies and more as a band influenced by Chea...

  “Rock ‘n’ roll ain’t worth the name if it don’t make you f**k...” - Motörhead - Overkill (as covered by Metallica & Lemmy on this ‘ere album) Now this is a bit of a weird one and possibly the most subjective GDR yet (ironic given that it’s a Metallica EP featured on this compilation that provided the name inspiration for this column). I have to be honest, although I've kind of dipped a toe in the waters many times down the years, I've never really considered myself to be a full on metalhead. I mean don't get me wrong, of course there's a few albums by Maiden, Sabbath, Led Zeppelin et al on my Ipod and I still love AC/DC and Motörhead but I've always instinctively preferred a bit of melody to a full on grunting assault. And in terms of the thrash/glam wars I was always firmly on the glam side - I mean, sure, I can see why grunge killed it off but at least it had good tunes, was aware that it was all a bit daft and was simply about a few drinks and a good time...

  Welcome to our monthly visit to the Singles Bar for May. Plenty of new sounds from all across the musical spectrum this month so take a seat and let us mix up something for you to enjoy... Kicking us into gear in suitably frenetic style this month are Los Pepes  with their new single Want You Back (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑). This does exactly what you'd want a Los Pepes song to do essentially - whiplash riff, scowled vocals, a bit of unexpected harmonica honking and it gets in, says what it has to say and gets out again before the two minute mark. B-sides Never Get It Right  and  Tell Me  are similarly high quality too and well worth a listen in their own right.  Bandcamp link here . Making a welcome comeback this month are Desperate Journalist  with Fault (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑), the lead-off single from their upcoming fourth album Maximum Sorrow . A bit more urgent than the band's usual output, the pounding drums, swirling bass and echoey guitar remind me more of Siouxsie ...

  "Where will ya be with your very last breath? Full of relief of full of regret?"  - Gold Blade , Strictly Hardcore , 1996 Like a lot of bands from this era, it was via hearing their excellent debut single Strictly Hardcore  on Steve Lamacq's evening session some time in the autumn of 1996 that I first became aware of Gold Blade. To say that they were a bit of an oddity in the Britpop era is putting it mildly but their sheer individuality and energy really set them apart from the copyists that were already bogging down the Britpop wagon as it skidded towards its eventual crash site the following year. The group were formed from the ashes of notorious post-punks the Membranes (who I was vaguely aware of at that point due to Therapy? covering their song Tatty Seaside Town  on the B-side of the Trigger Inside  single) with frontman John Robb and bass player Keith Curtis deciding to renew their links and start a new band up with a more straightforward punk approac...

  Take two American ex-pats from Kansas relocated to Machynlleth and a Welsh bass player and you evidently get the Mudd Club, a suitably scuzzy garage glam band with the ten tracks on Bottle Blonde  speeding past in an agreeably quick 28 minutes. I get the impression that people are going to compare this group to Amyl & The Sniffers with the snarling vocals and stripped down backing definitely being similarity. However, while I have to admit that the Sniffers' album was a bit of a disappointment mainly because of how quickly it started repeating itself, this is much better with songs such as Killin' Me  (which sounds like an old Dr Feelgood number liberally drenched in glitter and fumes), the creepy Cramps-indebted Wombat Twist and the surf-punk demolition derby of She Creature  adding the necessary variety to the more straight-ahead Chats style slices of fast 'n' loud garage punk like Bored To Death , Sick  and Paper Cut . There's a wickedly playful sense ...

  Signed to Xtra Mile recordings, Colchester's Pet Needs are another band who could probably be best described as "post-Idles". And in recent months, that genre has seen some great bands (Girls In Synthesis) and some unremarkable ones (TV Priest) spring up in almost equal measure. Pet Needs, I'm happy to report, definitely veer more towards the former - tracks such as the opening one-two of Outline  and Tracey Emin's Bed  definitely pack the necessary fight-or-flight anger brought on by smalltown psychosis while the juddering Sympathetic Accent Syndrome  is the sort of thing you can see igniting moshpits in the live arena. It's this anger which keeps Fractured Party Music  on the right side of good. Unlike some bands who use the "post-punk" handle as an excuse to throw out deliberately obtuse tunes which fail to grab your attention, there's a real rabid fury in here which grabs you by the throat and refuses to let you go on the likes of Overcompe...

  "If life is a radio, turn it up to ten!"  - Kiss - Crazy Crazy Nights It always used to make me chuckle in the early days of living in London about a decade ago before Soho was ruined by gentrification thanks to the fat greedy useless f**k who's somehow managed to now crawl his way up to the post of Prime Minister how upon visiting the Crobar or the 12 Bar and running into an American rocker tourist taking in the sights (and trust me, there always used to be a few of 'em dotted about) how, if the conversation got onto Kiss and you mentioned Crazy Crazy Nights  being the group's biggest hit over here they'd usually get an expression on their face akin to that of a Victorian gentleman who'd just been plonked in a helicopter pilot's seat at 30,000 feet and asked to fly the thing. The general consensus about Kiss is that their '70s stuff was their heyday and once Ace Frehley and Peter Criss left it was basically all just piling dirt on the coffin fro...

  "Am I the enemy? Is there a better me? You'd take one look and hope to god  you'd  say  there ought to be..."  - Vent 414 , Fixer  (1996) It's amazing how when you hit your late teens/early twenties and the bands you cut your teeth listening to guitar music to have mostly fallen by the wayside that you'll suddenly see them resurfacing in new guises giving you a whole load of new groups to listen to. Well, for 5-10 years until the bands they were in to begin with reform obviously... I mentioned in the 3 Colours Red SFTJ column a few weeks ago how it was mostly their Wildhearts/Senseless Things lineage that drew me to them and the same is true of Vent 414 who featured legendary former Wonder Stuff frontman Miles Hunt and ex- Senseless Things bassist Morgan Nicholls. Also along for the ride were ex-Clash/Eat drummer Pete Howard and, very briefly at the beginning, ex-Cult guitarist Billy Duffy. So the term "supergroup" was definitely being bandied a...

Another signing from Rum Bar records, New Jersey's Electraluxx actually remind me a lot of some of the rock 'n' roll revival acts who you get on London's very own Dirty Water records such as King Salami & The Cumberland Three or MFC Chicken and to be honest I'm quite surprised they haven't been picked up by said label on this side of the Atlantic. Buzz-o-Ramma  packs an enjoyably stripped down skeletal sound and blasts through its 13 tracks in just 29 minutes with a jumpy wired energy that makes it an enjoyable listen as evidenced on the one minute opener Tight Black Pants Girl  and the wired title track. There's a definite Chuck Berry/Bo Diddley influence on the likes of Catalina  and Little Miss ESP  while  Knock The Dust Off and Time Bomb  are pure Eddie Cochrane but the key is that it's done so well that you could almost believe Electraluxx's album is some great lost recording by a Gene Vincent/Vince Taylor influenced band from this era. This...

  Signed to the excellent Rum Bar records, Indonesian Junk have been slowly making a name for thesmselves in the last couple of years. Hailing from Milwaukee, the group are clearly in thrall to the poppier side of '70s NYC punk and, let's face it, that's always likely to go down well with us. I have to be honest, Livin' In A Nightmare  gets off to a bit of a slow start - Kind of Girl  and One More Try  (the latter featuring Kurt Baker) are slightly sluggish mid-paced efforts which clearly owe a tip of the hat to the more melodic side of the Ramones' output complete with vocals which sound like a cross between Joey and Stiv Bators but you kind of wish there was a bit more muscle in there to push things along. Happy to say though, Livin' In The USA  rights things in style with a much needed dose of snotty aggression to kick things up a gear. The almost '60s style power-pop of  I Don't Mind  provides a bit of an unexpected twist as well which is always we...