Album Review: Half Man Half Biscuit - "The Voltarol Years"

 

Maybe the ultimate cult band, it's somewhat reassuring to know that fifteen albums into their career, Wirral indie veterans Half Man Half Biscuit remain their usual scathingly sarcastic selves. With song titles like Tess Of The Dormobiles, Persian Rug Sale At The URC and Token Covid Song, it really couldn't be anyone other than HMHB really.

If there's an overriding theme on The Voltarol Years then, as the album title suggests, it's the onset of middle age and the depressing realisation that death is creeping up on you. The fact that it starts with I'm Getting Buried In The Morning, an ode to a murderer being sent to the electric chair, is telling and the likes of Big Man Up Front, dealing with a hit and run accident, the self-explanatory Beneath This Broken Headstone and the reflective closer Oblong Of Dreams which seems to be talking about a dying man's last moments.

Yet there's still plenty of room for Half Man Half Biscuit's trademark scabrous humour in here - In A Suffolk Ditch is an ode to leaving the bodies of Kelvin McKenzie and Nicholas Witchell in sacks in the aforementioned location while Midnight Mass Murder is an ode to lower league football akin to the classic Friday Night And The Gates Are Low.

With Mark E Smith sadly now no longer with us, it's good to see the north west's other infamous group of veteran indie curmudgeons still going strong and The Voltarol Years is proof that despite the fixation on more morbid topics, they've still got plenty of life left in them. A good album for both long time fans and those who are just getting started on their voyage of discovery of this rather awesome and unique band.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

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