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album reviews

Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster

Horse Of The Dog 8½ ( 2002 )
Celebrate Your Mother / Chicken / Whack Of Shit / Psychosis Safari / Giant Bones / Fishfingers / Charge The Guns / Morning Has Broken / Team Meat / Presidential Wave

If i'd reviewed this on the day I bought it, i'd have given it a '10' at least! Man, was I excited!! I came up with a dozen bands to compare The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster too, all of them great bands I love. In truth, the deep, slightly gothic vocals interspersed with demonic screams and combined with dirty, distorted Punk/Garage rock, all recorded by a band from Brighton, UK - was what really excited me, and still does. Sure, I could throw up a few names here of bands it appears Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster have listened to, but they don't sound like a copy of anybody. The vocals are the key to this new group sounding different in a small ( but still important ) way to other new Rock groups emerging in the early part of this decade. So, how do I even begin to describe the songs? I'll utilize a little snapshot technique, just invented, not yet tried. Hmmm. 'Celebrate Your Mother' includes fabulous rattle-a-tat drums and screaming interspersed with a fabulous lyric and much energy. All of the songs on this album are two, three minutes long. The album is twenty six minutes long, and really, it's a perfect length. Albums don't need to be sixty nine minutes long, really they don't. Things build up, 'Chicken' includes great shouted "HEY!!!!!!", and 'OH, NOOOOOOO!" parts, and that's enough in this case. The delightfully titled 'Whack Of Shit' is just that, delightful, loud, noisy and full of distorted bass guitar sounds. ( twenty minutes later, sorry, my sister called, it's her birthday on Monday! thank god she called, i'd totally forgotten. that's awful, isn't it???! ) - 'Psychosis Safari' is even better than 'Whack Of Shit', hey this is SERIOUS stuff! Okay, so it's not. It's not at all serious, it's dumb, silly, but gloriously dumb and silly with it, and always avoiding sounding like cliche, even though this is nothing new. It doesn't sound like a copy of anybody, even though it's most likely a copy of at least half a dozen different bands. In actual fact, I don't know quite how to describe this at all.

'Giant Bones' and 'Fish Fingers' have energetic guitars ( especially in 'Giant Bones' ) and energetic and hugely entertaining drumming ( especially in 'Fish Fingers' ) - and many vocal hooks. Many, many hooks. Screaming, unintelligible vocals, more screaming, everything sounding on the edge, lots of groovy bass lines. "SO BRING IT ON.....I AM THE SON OF GOD.... WHERHTHAHAOUT!" - and so forth. I am completely sober. A hugely silly guitar solo comes in, man, is 'Fish Fingers' great! 'Charge The Guns' is rythmic and groovy, 'Morning Has Broken' certainly not a school-assembly lullaby, rather a distorted, loud and energetic garage rock song of the highest order. 'Team Meat' arrives, groovy guitar melodies, 'Presidential Wave' tops four minutes, ROCK N ROLL!!!! Okay, so this entire review is stupid. So is this album. But then, unlike certain other new groups, The Hives possibly excepted, this album doesn't even pretend to be anything else. Any group coming from the UK, and from Brighton, a swinging place by the sea, often home to Fatboy Slim concerts - and sounding like THIS - just deserves your respect.

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Readers Comments Cathy Farr littlefarr@lineone.net I saw this band in Brighton recently. They are fantastic live. They offended the majority of the audience and thrilled a small number of us. Listening to them as I write makes me smile. Yeah, they're havin' a laugh. Great performers. Catherine Cutts radicaldonkey@hotmail.com Excellent Review of Horse of the Dog. I am inclined to agree with you that nothing on the album is serious. But having seen them live last year (2002); They are serious performers. Despite Guy Mcknight (singer) being sick on my shoes when he attempted his Alien like scream in Fishfingers (the "Pa-Pow") section, it was a brilliant night out and seriously worth it.