I missed the initial hype in the early 1990s about these noisy and angry young chaps, hailing from my wife’s home town, Blackwood, and didn’t really give them a listen until after the disappearance of Richey Edwards and the subsequent albums.
So, seeing this, their debut, for a quid at a boot fair, I parted with my hard earned pound fairly clear what to expect.
It’s well produced angry rock and it’s not hard to see how these young lads rocking out their anger made a refreshing change from the shoegazing miserablists who were so in vogue as the 1980s closed. The lyrics scream the idealism of education without extensive life experience, which can be either bright and life affirming or hackneyed and embarrassing depending how far down the road of elderly cynicism you are on that particular day.
Lots of four minute, guitar riff heavy songs, with the catchy singles Slash N’ Burn, Motorcycle Emptiness and You Love Us standing out early on. But after the first few, the album seems to lose its way in the middle third, waking up towards the end with Stay Beautiful and Damn Dog but never really regaining the early instant energy.
This album is 73 minutes long. Ten years earlier it would have been presented as a double LP, or more likely for a debut album, a 45 minute LP which might have been remembered as a classic. Sadly the urge to fill a CD to give ‘value for money’ dilutes the impact of an impressive debut.
3* - certainly enough to keep the interest, but also enough that’s unremarkable.
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