If ever there was a time that rock music needed a hot throbbing injection it was the late 80s’ – early 90s.’ Most bands were mincing around the Sunset Strip and the only thing they were able to get hard was with the aid of a can of super strength hairspray. Thankfully there was a tattooed beat messiah in England who was just about to make things change. Wearing jizz stained, leather trousers which were never washed and rarely taken off, this ‘Wild child’ was thrust in the faces of unsuspecting schoolgirls, nuns and whatever else this grubby grebo could get his pussy stinking fingers up the tight snatch of. Ladies and Gentlemen Zodiac Mindwarp and his Love Reaction had arrived and rock n roll was well and truly fucked!
A lot has happened in that 25 years, the band were wildly popular for a while but that kind of waned. Zod and his long surviving guitarist Cobalt Stargazer have seen others come into the band and leave wrecked and bleeding from every orifice, never to be heard of again. There have been various albums and some literature written by Mark Manning, Zodiac’s humanistic alter ego, which you really have to check out, especially those co-written with Bill Drummond of The KLF. Also he thankfully survived a ruptured blood vessel of the brain in 2004, which almost put paid to the singer’s life. Although I have been going to see the band at salubrious drinking holes throughout the last god knows how many years, I always thought they deserved more recognition but perhaps that is about to come. We have new album ‘We Are Volsung,’ their first in five years, a new label with SPV and live dates with none other than Alice Cooper who the band originally played with (along with the likes of ahem GnR) back in 1988. Once again it’s time to lock up your daughters and grandma too (they ain’t picky) as the scuzziest, filthiest, meanest rock n’ roll band ever ride back in town.
So what are Volsung? Well you need to open the Norse mythology textbook up to find out but put briefly the group are “playing for the Viking descendants,” and embracing their “tough manly ordeals.” If you haven’t swooned over the thought of this let’s get onto the music! Starting with heavy chugging guitar and bass on ‘Stark Von Oben’ we get a beastly build up and vocals rising up to a craggy fist pumping anthem of a chorus. One listen and the next day you are destined to wake up with this bitch going round in your head and sticky sheets to boot. In case you were wondering the translation of the song is ‘The Strong One From Above’ and it is what Hitler thought he was, a messiah born by providence to create the thousand year Reich. The title track doesn’t have a huge difference of melody to this, although occasional guitar flurries and looser drumming from the stool of The Cat give this a distinction. As ever the long flowing leads from Cobalt are littered all over the shop and shimmer gloriously as they fly out the speakers. With the surprisingly still surviving Jack Shitt’s bass tones rumbling through ‘We Ride’ you can feel a chapter of Angels revving up and flying into the streets to cause carnage. Zodiac has always been one of those biker friendly bands and this is a greasy party song guaranteed to get a debauched night orgy kicking off.
Elsewhere the guitar riff on ‘White Trash’ cheekily cites biggest hit ‘Prime Mover’ as this spews like a raucous party at a trailer park. It’s as though Zodiac is trying to appeal to the lowest dregs of society with these songs although perhaps I should say ‘those perceived as,’ so not to annoy some no doubt very dangerous potential readers. A humorous ‘Don’t Touch My Guitar’ allows Cobalt to wank his axe mercilessly and Zod to do an Elvis and the rest of the gang shout away in the background. As for ‘Lucille’ it’s a live favourite we know all too well. I particularly like the closing song ‘To Kill A Mockingbird,’ it’s got a bit of a Cajun guitar feel to it and drops in both Harper and Stagger Lee along with some most demented babbling from the vocalist who really lets himself go along with the already going for it guitar leads.
‘We Are Volsung’ may only be 31 minutes long but it packs in plenty of action and what we get is one hard rocking mama of an album. Whatever you do with it is up to you but you can bang either of those heads till your hearts content, so dig deep, put your hands in your pockets, scratch your balls and give these wretched bumhooligans your money, they deserve it for services rendered…….. to your ma!
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