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A big mother-fucking beautiful bastard of a release. There I’ve said it. You have been warned. The kind of release that in truth I could happily listen to all day - and have (in fact).
Having already served their notice of intent on the recent must have ’Monstrous Proportions’ split 10” where they admirably held their ground amid a four label / four band face off with Todd, Part Chimp and Hey Colossus with the almighty ’I shook the Royal throne’ the Lords return to the fray with their debut full length ’This ain’t a hate thing, it’s a love thing’.
Made up of ex members of Wolves! (of Greece) whose debut one sided 10” platter still scares the breezes out of the hi-fi to this very day, the Lords, or so it appears have discovered their mojo bag, yet while most kiss, rub and care for it in the hope that they’ll find their muse and in turn all the success that ensues, these blighters you suspect have stomped all over theirs leaving it very much unloved. ’This ain’t a hate thing’ oozes with the kind of beaten and battered blues much in evidence throughout the bruised back catalogue of the likes of Shellac and John Spencer Blues Explosion perfectly exemplified on the curtain closing fraughtly noodling and spiteful ‘My sweetheart the horse‘. Yet with a small finite difference. Those two aforementioned ensembles appear to be of their day feeding off surrounding vibes of that precise time and place, the Lords are however a blues band in the very best tradition of the genre with the cuts slyly referencing elements of Zeppelin (especially on the dirty off your face ‘the Unfortunate Death of the Lords’ or the loosely sexualised ’Ethan’) and Sabbath while enveloping the resulting brew with the raw edge of very early career AC/DC (just check out the ragged discordant rumble of the ear lashing ’Liquer’) albeit considerably bent out of a shape and sounding like they’ve not only been dragged backwards and screaming through a hedgerow backwards but reared in a swampland replete with a subtle mid 70’s art jazz rock DNA and intricately woven in ostensibly fucked up time signatures.
From the freewheeling hip grinding no nonsense retro boogie of the tightly honed ’the Ballad of the Sightless and the Outs…..’ to the blissed out laid back groove of the mooching ‘Baijoul’ with its nods to Elmore, Muddy and Hendrix all being catered for in a finitely packed 3.53 slot ’This ain’t a hate thing…’ never disappoints instead preferring to happily snap at your heels and just when you think you’ve got the measure of the beast the imps go and throw in ‘Mingus (Part 1-3)’. The best thing here by far as it takes you unexpectedly into classic Beefheart ‘Trout Mask Replica’ era territories into a cauldron of awkwardly contorting stop start rhythms the type of which that sound as though they’re in a state of prolonged math rock seizure like convulsions. An absolute seismic gem of a release.
MARK BARTON
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