Album Review: Dead Men Walking - "Freedom...It Ain't On The Rise"

 

Formed as a supergroup, initially under the stewardship of Mike Peters, Billy Duffy and Kirk Brandon, Dead Men Walking have been through a few line-ups in recent years with the current incarnation consisting of Brandon, Stiff Little Fingers' Jake Burns and the Ruts' rhythm section of Segs Jennings and Dave Ruffy. This is their belated first album and, as per the group's live shows, it's a mainly acoustic effort consisting of some new songs and a few re-recorded numbers from the various members' main groups.

It's to those involved's credit that they haven't leaned back too extensively on their better known material with the only three selections that could arguably be described as obvious ones - SLF's Wasted Life, Spear of Destiny's Never Take Me Alive and the Ruts' Staring At The Rude Boys held back for the end of the album and DMW manage to do all of them justice. Aside from the new tracks, the majority of the other selections are from those involved's more recent output and hold up well in this format. Burns brings two tracks from SLF's No Going Back to the table in the form of My Dark Places and Guilty As Sin and while, hand on heart, I wasn't too jazzed on that particular album these were two of the stronger tracks on it and they lend themselves well to this format with the more subtle arrangement allowing the heartfelt nature of the songs to come to the front and shine. Likewise Kill The Pain and Golden Boy from the Ruts DC's Music Must Destroy show a more stripped down side to this group's output that you maybe wouldn't associate with them and Theatre of Hate's Slave, taken from their 2016 album Kinshi, keeps enough of its snarling anger within the stripped down acoustic arrangement to work well.

The new songs are decent as well with Brandon's angry state of the nation address Dorothy, Segs' haunting Blame and the ode to people gone too soon Man Down all working well. Overall, acoustic albums tend to be pretty difficult territory but Dead Men Walking can all congratulate themselves on a job well done here which puts a genuinely different spin on a few old classics, shines a light on some overlooked songs and packs in a few decent newies for good measure. Impressive stuff.

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