If you like your heavy metal to be flyin’ free and darting along like an out-of-control ice-cart on the bob-sleigh run from hell, then this is maybe your kinda thing.

Take five young scuzzy speedsters from Sweden and add a potent mix of pretentious ring-a-ding metal with girlie thrusting,
screams and fuzzy speed guitar breaks and whaddya get? You get Enforcer.  This band is the 2010 answer to the seventies glam metal act  ‘Sweet.’   Do ya have Sweet memories? I mean do you really remember Sweet?  The Connolly, Priest, Scott, Tucker  formula? I’m talking about the flip-side of that tacky bubble-gum top-of-the-pops teenybop tat.  I mean their existence as a full metal band  (a little known fact is that vocalist Ian Gillan started with them.) They used to scare the wee & wits out of the teeny chinni-chap fans at their live shows when they played their metal.  Astonishing, but true.

Anyway, back to the straining vocals and the high-pitched notes pushed up close to the edge like sheer nylon against pale thighs, Enforcer thrust and jutted their way onto stage at Hard Rock Hell Prestatyn. Song-after-song like ‘Katana’ as loud, infuriating and as volatile as a wasp in a whiskey jar were thrown into the cold night air like confetti candy. ‘Katana’ is a crazy heist of a song with that yapping poodle crazy-man flapping from Olof Wikstrand (Brian Connolly’s love-child surely?) And dolly mixture shaker percussion from Jonas Wikstrand – Drums.  Guitar licks saltily shimmer across the icy lakes of sound, from competent team-work of Adam Zaars and  Joseph Tholl on guitars. Adding to the grit and the grist is Tobias Lindqvist on boozy grinding bass.

With songs like ‘Running in Menace’ with the echoes of flame leaping out across the cavernous depths of the melody or ‘Roll the Dice’ with a sparkling sorbet, roller derby downhill slope of frosty sounz and blistering beats. This band is made to rock. At speed. Ruddy fiery drums drill deep into your brain and pain your bones. And the songs play dangerous hypnotic games with your synapses. The Enforcer phaser is set to tingle.

Following the great tradition of naming bands after Clint Eastwood films (see also The Beguiled, Kellys Heroes, Thunderbolt, The Gauntlet, The Dead, The Unforgiven), how can you go wrong with that kind of macho name? The Enforcer continued to blaze through their Hard Rock Hell set like a gunpowder genie igniting your sisters collection of voodoo dolls. With songs like ‘High Roller’ whose licks of spume touch the nape of your neck before glancing across your face. Salty, wet and, yes, cool against the throat. Silver studded raw anthems of energetic thrust.

With a voice like a banshee bantam bloodcurdling out of the mouth of a fiery hell, Olof rears up and wanders the stage as a vigorous white-wolf on the prowl. And the guitars whip up a frenzy of sounds, with hundreds and thousands of white stars on top. This is exciting, loud, amazing stuff.

Enforcer is a hyperbole of sounds, of blistering hot molten guitar licks and crazy gouging riffs that enter your heart and worm their way through to the sinews.  Give them a clear shot.

© Neil_Mach
December 2010

Link:

http://www.myspace.com/enforcerswe

Vikki didn’t need to strap a firework to her bass guitar at the start of SPiT’s performance because she has a great set of sparklers anyhow, and she whirls around like a Catherine wheel – she fires my rocket every time I see her, anyways. Woosh!

Sinewy Lord Zion is half man half beast. A kind of camp version of Naboo the Enigma (Michael Fielding).  He thrusts and shimmies across the stage to the thundering glam accompaniment of Cyndi Rott on guitar. Cyndi chimes chirr-ups and chugs the strings like a latter-day Andy Scott (Sweet). Thundering in a solitary almost masbatorial manner up the back is the drummer Vile Gilez.

For those of us that still like glam metal and show-biz punk then SPiT are probably the only remaining super-heroes that are in a position to save a world dominated by serious (yet ultimately morose) bands like Snow Patrol,Stereophonics and The Strokes. That’s ‘cos grandiose is not welcome in the noughties home.  Punk and glam are foul words. Don’t worry too much about teenage suicide, endemic drug addiction and the failure of education, health and law & order.  Just reserve your venom, wrath and vitriol for guys wearing mascara and glitter platforms and gals who wear shiny leather bondage pants and twinkling bras. Oh bondage … up yours!

So I bought the SPiT album last year (the one they recorded with their record label before the last one…) and, guess what? Largely, it sucks.  But is that a surprise? I suppose not. Not really. Essentially, SPiT is a live band, a live experience. A cabaret band.  They were never destined for tedious recording studios.  Nor for the big bucks tours of stadiums and arenas. SPiT will, however, always have an ardent art-house following, a solid clubland following and a happy-go-lucky pub-rock following. Why?  Because they are essential. We need the likes of SPiT as much as we need water and oxygen in a world gasping for breath and hopelessly dry of emotion and glamour.

SPiT have played every Hard Rock Hell festival so far, and this year they were topping off the 2009 weekend by being the last band to play.  They have managed to get to this point through sheer hard work. And you have to hand it to ‘em – they deserve to be where they are right now.

They played a handful of their songs in rapid succession but SPiT fans and newbies alike were glad when they got to the ‘point in the show’ where they inevitably play the Rocky Horror Show staple “Sweet Transvestite”.  Lord Zion must be a ‘proper’ fan of RHS because he even includes the Brad & Janet spoken parts into the rendition.  He also plays up the “Antici——- Pation” element.

As they announce. “All I ever needed was sex, drugs and heavy metal” the crowd fizzes and explodes into rapturous applause. And who can blame ‘em?  This band is all that you (and I) ever needed!  SPiT LiKE THiS bring it on. In abundance.

© Neil_Mach

December 2009

http://www.myspace.com/spitlikethisuniverse

The combined talent and  the significant antecedent histories of these three notable rockers (Cosmo and Mick were playing professionally back in the 1960s) together with their new bass player Andy Hodge and their flamboyant frontman Paul Manzi, easily earn them a place in the ‘Rock Royalty’ section of the lexicon of popular music  With these credentials, they really should be sipping margueritas on a sunny tropical shore somewhere.

But it is not enough to rest on your laurels, especially if you wanna live a rock n ‘roll lifestyle to the extreme … these guys are still out working every week – making  new music and recreating their old fire and magic at local venues around West London.

These guys still rock.  They still perform out-and-out guts and glory assaults on the tender eardrums of unsuspecting punters any given Saturday night.

Big dirty tunes like ‘Bad Girl’ are overblown heavy metal anthems stylistically blasted through with bombastic beats and heavy riffs. These songs crash out of the Raw Glory speakers in waves and waves of sound, drowning the audience, and making ‘em gasp for air.

I am at that ‘dangerous age’.  So, when I had my first “sound attack”, inflicted upon me by Raw Glory, I clutched my heaving chest.  My arms went stiff like a starfish, but at the same time, my legs turned to jelly. Then my ears started to drum, hiss and crackle intermittently and, finally, a shooting star whooshed up the left side of my brain and fired out of my pineal gland like a flame blasting from a blow torch.  I thought that I would never recover.  Wow – this is potent stuff.  If heavy metal was illegal then Raw Glory would be ‘class A’ – and this stuff they are still pedalling would be the equivalent of 100% pure Colombian.

The rest of the audience at Hard Rock Hell also suffered severe  “Sound Attacks”.  We even had a taste of the kinda magic that drummer Mick Underwood could still evoke on the skins. It seems unlikely that there was a better, faster, fatter performance on the drums over the entire three days of the festival.  And guitarist Cosmo also cranked up the angst and let fly with furious laments, banshee cries, whispers, whelps and raining chords.  It was all there in the sound attacks that he performed for the crowd at Prestatyn.

But it was the singer who stole the show from his distinguished colleagues and turned a modest pub sized gig into a major tour de force suitable for a stadium-sized sell-out.  The tail of the peacock, the enlarged claw of a male fiddler crab and the overblown curly mop of hair upon the head of wild rock singer such as Paul Manzi or Robert Plant are all sure-fire signs of male virility. Here was an alpha-male strutting the territory of his stage in glorious dominance. The truest definition of all that is, and ever was, so macho. He said that he owed everything to Led Zep.  And the band’s startling rendition of ‘Whole Lotta Love’, to round off their set, proved this to be true.

Like the rest of the eager audience I was swept away by the sheer vibrancy of the Raw Glory act – and my favourite number “White Lies” was still ringing in my ears several hours later. Raw Glory is the sum of all that is noble and  strong in the world of heavy metal and rock n’ roll.

And they prove that you don’t have to be youthful to be vital.

I wish them many, many more years of rocking.  Good Health!

© Neil_Mach

December 2009

http://www.rawglory.co.uk/

Lord Zion has sent me three dates to put in your diary:

Apr 8 2009      7:00P
*DATE & VENUE CHANGE* THE GAFF with NEMHAiN (Tour Warm-Up)     London, London and South East
Apr 16 2009     11:00P
LORD ZiON DJ Set @THE DiRT @ THE BORDERLiNE     London, London and South East
Apr 24 2009     7:00P
THE PiTZ – on tour with NEMHAiN     Milton Keynes

APRIL UK tour for Crimes of Passion

www.myspace.com/crimesofpassionrock

Apr 18 2009      7:30P
DJ Beerman presents………. The Old Wharf     Birmingham
May 1 2009     8:00P
The Yardbirds Grimsby with Logan     Grimsby UK
May 8 2009     8:00P
Montgomery Hall Wath – CRS ’Rotherham Rocks’ with Threshold etc     Rotherham
May 15 2009     8:00P
The Three Horse Shoes     Ilkeston
May 19 2009     8:00P
02 Academy Newcastle with Logan     Newcastle UK
May 20 2009     8:00P
Corporation Sheffield with Logan     Sheffield
Jun 13 2009     8:00P
Classic Rock Society @ The Wesley Centre Maltby     Maltby/Sheffield
Aug 8 2009     8:00P
Cambridge Rock Festival     Godmanchester

Helsinki Rock n roll circus masters Ozzi the Rose and Teme have upped two news songs to their myspace player.

“Roses in the Graveyard” and “Together as One”  Check them out …

www.myspace.com/rosebandits

Adelaide’s favoured sons have been working hard on a newly released debut EP titled  “Welcome To The Freakshow”. If you like your rock somewhere between Hardcore Superstar and Faster Pussycat then these carbonated hardrock sinners could be what you been searchin’ for.

Link: www.myspace.com/diamondsins

Voodoo Johnson – Just Another Bad Habit to Kick

Jazz bandmaster Humph [the late Humphrey Lyttelton] once told his band, “Always play a gig as if one guy in the audience has travelled 100 miles just to hear you…” Good advice for any live performer. Well I was ‘that’ guy in ‘that’ audience at Eddies Rock Club Sat 31 Jan 2009- there to see Voodoo Johnson and, I have to confess, I was not that impressed…

Now don’t get me wrong, some of VJ’s material was cool enough. Take the Velvet Revolver-ish song’ Bad Habit’ for example, with the cool Axl Rose start and the slimebag lyrics “don’t try to f**k around with me” this is one of those songs that swaggers into the bar and pinches your pint right from under your nose before sneaking out into the ‘smoking area’ with your missus for a bit of  ‘hows your father.’ It is just right. A rock song with an attitude that you just have to respect.

But on the night I saw ‘em anyways, the Johnson boys lacked any vim. Or any vigour. Or any va-va-voom. You know what I mean.

They just weren’t damned exciting enough. Yes I know, I know – that the club was empty and the audience comprised of the bar staff, hangers on, road crew, a couple of dossers (and me)…but maybe- just maybe- that was exactly Humph’s point! You still have gotta give it some heart…and kick up an atmosphere.

Kev Bayliss  – the Chad Kroeger voiced front man- looked keen and supersmooth (and the bar-girls and the hangers-on remarked that he looked yummy) but he is no Rob Alder … yes he “did the job” and he fronted the band…but I felt that the performance lacked any authentic conviction. ‘Seven Years’ is a lucid, thumping sack-race of a song with a pulsating beat and a swirling undercurrent of a guitar that should showcase Carl Gethin’s lead – but even this seemed a lack-lustre and feeble affair.

‘Nowhere In Between’ is Voodoo Johnson’s ‘big’ number with a ‘System Of A Down’ hardcore feel to it and a touch of sophistication and a toxic black edge to the sludgy atmosphere. This was probably their finest offering on the night. But the boys scored nil points with the oft covered ‘All Along The Watchtower’ that plodded along like some podgy West Midlands cop who had just secretly scoffed all of his sergeants doughnuts during happy hour at the late-nite dunkin donuts…this was about as vibrant as a wet french letter tossed into a rain drenched gutter. Where was the song’s apocalyptic impact and the legendary cranking and crunching of gears? Well I couldn’t make them out.

Generally, the acoustics were so bass heavy and bottomy ( imagine a cross between Dawn French and a weeble bouncing on a low-slung trampoline) that the expected thumping black deep dark bass sounds were not-so-much Monster Magnet but more thick globs of black treacle dolloped out for the ears.

The VJ boys are not new to all this. They have been widely applauded around the UK and have supported luminaries like Duff McKagan in the past. I admit that it was difficult to fill this Eddies slot (replacing The Gypsy Pistoleros at the last moment) and the venue did not do them any credit (why were they on soooo early dammit?) but the local boys looked  (and sounded)  thoroughly disinterested.

When Voodoo Johnson finally got off stage they headed straight for the bar to sink their pints. I was gonna go over and say ‘It is no use getting depressed over such a low turn-out- ya gotta be bigger than that’ but I decided against it…the looks on their faces said everything I needed to know!

Neil_Mach

Copywright 2009

www.myspace.com/voodoojohnson

Competition to win 2 x pairs of tickets for Tailz London Show

Well Tailz Manics, the Tailz have announced a competition to win 2 x pairs of tickets for the upcoming Hardcore Superstar + Tigertailz + Heavens Basement show at the University Of London (ULU), UK on Thursday 12th March 2009.

All you have to do to enter is answer the following question and email it to us – couldn’t be easier….

Question = What major US festival are the Tailz playing this year..?

Please Email your answers to admin@tigertailz.co.uk
* Note – please include your full postal address with your answer in your email

All correct answers will be put in a hat and the two winners drawn and announced on Monday 2nd March.

There two winners will each receive 1 x pair of tickets each (i.e. 2 tickets per winner).

The two lucky winners will be sent their tickets via recorded delivery after the competition ends.

Good luck!

TT ADMIN
www. tigertailz. co. uk
www. myspace. com/tigertailzcouk

Stumble It!

Those South-West London dirty rock n’ rollers the GASOLINE QUEENS are advertising for a new leadsman/vocalist…They want to make it clear that noone is planning to leave the band but, when the band was formed, it was always the intention to have a separate vocalist and frontman. Nige’ has been handling lead guitar & vocals (very accomplished) ever since because no suitable singer has been found but now he really wants to settle down with the axe.

The band list their influences as New York Dolls/Johnny Thunders, Rolling Stones, T Rex, The Damned (early years) Georgia Satellites, AC/DC, Ramones et al. It is worth mentioning that the band are in their – ahem- latter years so this position may not suit a singer fresh from Moms teat..

www.myspace.com/thegasolinequeens