‘I want to fly like an eagle / I wanna sing like Sinatra / I’ve got a date with destruction / I wanna love like a mother’. So begins the new album from the EIGHTIES MATCHBOX B-LINE DISASTER and let’s face it who hasn’t felt like that? Welcome to their warped world. Whilst their debut album ‘Horse of the Dog’ was a brutal, short, sharp shock, ‘Royal Society’ is a major step forward musically without losing everything that made them great in the first place. Yes, they’re still the clown princes of British music but equally they’re a thrilling, cartoon rock ‘n’ roll band in the best traditions of the Ramones or the Cramps.
Starting as they mean to carry on, opening song and most recent single ‘Rise of the Eagles’ is a bass heavy, grinding guitar, handclap happy groove featuring the catchline ‘it’s not your fault you’re the living dead / as you were taught just to nod your head’. The video depicts Guy McKnight as the sleaziest, most evil eyed US president you can imagine and is one of the most hilarious 2 minutes 45 seconds you could wish to spend. The unrelenting flow continues with ‘I Could Be An Angle’: probably their most commercial single to date and a piece of sublime gothic tinged rock. It bounces along sleazily as McKnight drools over his mate's sister. It wonderfully encapsulates their ear for a great tune and their unnerving, yet amusing lyrical content.
Throughout this record McKnight's voice veers somewhere between Nick Cave and Vic Reeves' club singer. On ‘Puppy Dog Snails’ he wheels out his deepest booming voice before turning horror show creepy for the pantomime chorus ‘what do we do with the puppy dogs tails / what do we do with the bucket of snails / what do we do with a boy like you / we throw them in the pot and throw them in the fire’. Utterly ridiculous the first time you hear it, but repeat listening uncovers it’s genius which includes whistling and b movie guitars.
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‘The Dancing Girls’ is a mid tempo rumbler, ‘Migrate Migraine’ shoves it’s foot to the floor and turns in a buzzing piece of menace likely to send mosh pits into overdrive live. Similarly ‘The Fool’ and ‘The Man Of The Way Of The Staff’ are unrelenting pieces of nastiness, in particular the latter as it contains McKnight's most unhinged vocal over evil guitar churning and eventually waves of feedback. On ‘I Rejection’, McKnight seems to be in the midst of some sort of schizophrenic episode, swapping voices at will over a creeping musical backdrop, ‘Give me some love / ‘cos I feel like a dead man.’ Quite. You may be already familiar with the single ‘Mister Mental’: a blistering psychobilly work out with the glorious ‘Do you suffer from mental?’ chorus.
Sleazy, unhinged, creepy and comical they may be, but this album also proves that there’s much more to the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster. Above all they rock like bastards and ‘Royal Society’ doesn’t contain a dull moment. In essence, there isn’t another band around that inhabit the same universe as them and on the evidence of this record, long may they continue to pedal their own filthy brand of b movie horror rock ‘n’ roll.
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