Artist: Vladimirs
Title: The Late Hours
Type: Album
Label: Hell’s Headbangers

According to assorted sources, including the band’s home page, this latest album from Ohio’s own horror punks Vladimirs is due out in the UK on 22nd November; damn they’ve missed a trick! A couple of weeks earlier and ‘The Late Hours’ could have been the soundtrack of a thousand Halloween parties. Opening track ‘Last Song For The Lost’ sets the tone for almost the whole album, nasty snarling guitars and drums married to Danzig/Vanian sneering vocals, pogoing past at under two minutes in true punk style. The Misfits B movies styling is maximised in the follow up, ‘Zombie Eyed Youth’, a curve ball being thrown in by the fact that the song is not about some Ed Wood flick, but rather social commentary on the loss of a generation, punk politics mixing with the pure entertainment.

Like a Doc Martin wearing zombie on speed, Vladimirs kick their way through snappy track after track, from the pure movie mayhem of ‘City of the Living Dead’ to the obsessive self cutting murder ballad ‘Blind Love’, a song that puts to shame the pseudo gloom of the whole Emo movement in a stomping four minutes of unashamed retro angst, ably supported by the gloomy punch of ‘Synthetic Happiness’. However, far from being a one pace band, Vladimirs throw in some nice metallic guitar riffs into the mix in ‘New Flesh’, a sound that will appeal to those whose hair is long rather then spiked. Where they really surprise is in the album closing title track ‘The Late Hours’. When I first loaded the CD, I thought there must be some sort of fault, hidden track, or blank space, as the time showed 15:53! Surely some mistake amongst all the fast paced assaults of the rest of the album. No, the machine was right, and I was wrong. The band instead go on a slower paced gothic journey, the guitars having an almost countrified style in the first solo, but not the poppy country of Garth Brooks, rather the soul crushing emptiness of Johnny Cash’s dust bowl West. This darkness and desolation is heightened mid track by the soaring chords of a church organ before the song almost goes down a black metal route with a brief snatch of harsh vocal snarls as the guitars speed up into a huge layered solo. This song could easily be broken down into three or four tracks on an EP, but with their skill and experience, Vladimirs bring it together into one all encompassing number.

Fans of Green Day take note; this is catchy punk without the corporate commercial whoring. Buy it!

http://www.myspace.com/vladimirs

http://www.thevladimirs.com

Spenny Bullen

MTUK HOME