Face Your Biggest Fear is Janus Stark's pandemic lockdown album that Gizz Butt wrote during lockdown at his home studio that he retreated too when he could no longer go to work as a top-notch touring guitarist. In case you're not familiar Gizz is best known for his time with The Prodigy and has also worked with Ginger Wildheart, English Dogs and many others. The current line-up of Janus Stark is Gizz Butt, Richard Gombault, Dave Pistolas, Simon Martin and Fozzy.
The album explodes into life with Father Time a full-on rocker with some memories and regrets for those that Father Time has got the better of, as the guitars shimmer shake and go all squiggly at times as Gizz Butt's burnished vocals say goodbye to a good few friends.
Rolling With the Punches feels like we have all been gut punched and are trying to get our breath back and our lives back to where they ought to be over racing guitars and angry vocals that never forget to have a good catchy chorus for everyone to fist pump too.
I Don't Want Your Sympathy is good and crunchy and tells it like it is, as they have a go at someone who's always looking down there noses at them, with no real reason for it. That and wanting normality to return so they can get back to doing what they do best, rocking like a top-notch band should do this sums up how lots of my friends felt in the middle of lockdown.
Eddie 'N Larkin is a song set in the pre-internet world where you booked hotels and turned up without know exactly where they would be, in this case in the middle of San Francisco's Tenderloin back when it was in full debauched glory or infamy, this is evokes Blue Period or Typhoon and similar SF based rockers and can be easily heard without figuring out just what it's about. But Gizz's comprehensive notes make clear.
One More Ghost is a song for everyone we lost during the pandemic and how futile it was trying to light a candle for all the losses, this races away a bit, but the staccato guitar part almost seems to be counting the lives as they become yet One More Ghost.
Clusterfuck is a tune that sums up the last 5 years or so, if not longer just about perfectly, a great slice of power pop punk metal with a great sign along chorus and supercharged chugging guitars.
You name the crisis and this is the song for it. It also has possibly the best guitar solo on the album, but that's up for debate.
The b-side starts with Reassuring has the sound of classic Wildhearts and goes off in all the right places. This song is actually about being invited to say some words at a Keith Flint tribute set at Glastonbury that got very out of hand, so badly it had to be cancelled, so have a good listen and throw a few quid towards MIND or a similar mental health charity.
Mariana Trench is about as deep as this record gets. With lyrics by Simon Wright this is about how deep your feelings re for your nearest and dearest and how hard it is to recover from losing them, the guitars are wild and the drums just seem to be aiming for the murky depths.
Stick is about one of those things we all need to remember, just because you like different things or we disagree it doesn't mean we can't be friends and get along, there are always at least two sides to everything. With nice chugging beat and some good gang of mates backing vocals hopefully the message will get through you can like The Prodigy and Depeche Mode or whatever else you're bickering about.
My Culling is about what you have to do to really change your life, move to another city of country over a good speedy riff as Gizz discusses what it took for him to cancel himself and move on, the guitar solo on this goes more widdly than anything else on the album.
Shoot Me If I Don't Have The Right closes the album with a huge metal ballad that feels like it needs a huge windswept 80's style video, as this asks you to make connections with the people who may be on the edge and need help as well as the friends who get jealous when your doing well, the proggy breakdown is quite out of place and yet works brilliantly as does pretty much everything on this album, so make sure you communicate as much as you can with all your friends and acquaintances to help them not to shoot themselves.
Find out more at https://timematterrecordings.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/JanusStarkBand
