The industry has been shining its' spotlights on Leeds with the same fervent desperation of Kripos homing in on Berlin Wall escapees of late, but - typically - there's one band whose uncompromising stance seems to have evaded the shrapnel, not to mention the credit cards and glossy front covers.
I'm talking about the terminally magnificent SCARAMANGA SIX again, of course. Too full-on and bloodthirsty to survive on the NME'S radar, they are nonetheless one of the underground's most self-sufficient success stories and continue to spearhead the wonderful Wrath! Records roster, which - lest we forget - also represents the cynically brilliant BEING 747, the short-fuse excitement of the under-rated STUFFY/THE FUSES, the sheer oddball factor of FARMING INCIDENT and until recently, the sadly-deceased GALITZA.
A breathtaking roster in anyone's Esperanto, but with their third and best album to date, The Scaramanga Six once again proclaim themselves top of the pile with "Cabin Fever": an album long on drama, power and ambition as well as the murderous, piledriving rock action we've come to expect from this stupidly under-rated band.
After all, few bands would have the confidence and sheer gall to open their album with an epic like the nautical-themed "Soul Destroyer". Huge kettle drums give way to the atmospheric main motif, tinkly marimbas, John Barry guitars and that lowdown Hammond, before Steve Morricone - in best defiant, self-mythologising mode - sings of journeying "with the wind against us, we are sailing ever backwards". The band soon crunch in like rampant JCBs levelling prefabs and in the space of five minutes you instinctively know this is gonna be stupendous.
And so it proves, as the Six pile into a slew of fantastic songs like "Smite My Face", "The Poison Pen" and the tremendous "We Rode The Storm." "Smite My Face" is punk rock heaven and rocks its' testies off as Morricone spits out the dying-of-the-light lyrics ("I've delusions of grandeur/ ideas above my station") and a harpsichord (?) chimes along incongrously as someone shoves a rocket up its' arse. "The Poison Pen" is one of several brilliant, but overlooked S6 singles and makes like "No More Heroes"-era Stranglers hotwiring Messerschmits with The Jesus Lizard and "We Rode The Storm" ups the band's natural edginess to alarming, QOTSA-influenced degrees and blasts out that heroic "we weathered the storm, yeah we can take it, we came through!" chorus with all its' nine lives to spare.
They're unstoppable by this stage and have no intention of doing anything but pressing home their advantage. Indeed, if anything the album intensifies again wthen you hit the second of the record's solid-gold epics with "Unclean". This starts out as a slinky, rattlesnake death crawl of a blues offset with jarring, femmy "bap ba da da" backing vocals, but - led by Paul Morricone's growling JJ Burnel bass invective - it soon billows out into a starcrossed powerplay. The broodingly atmospheric "A Song For You" initially lulls you into a momentary sense of false security, but before long is making like the most damning, vsceral ballad you've ever heard, and "The Electricity, Bill" is kickstarted three times before it revs itself into a prime, MC5-style cruise full of attitude and danger.
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Most bands would be utterly spent by this time, but not The Scaramanga Six, and they hoard the deadliest molotovs of all for the final ambush with "The Coward" and "Horrible Face". "The Coward" lurches into life as a diseased, club-footed creep: the organ is hymnal, the theremin is kooked and wafts nervously around the room and, as Steve delivers arguably his most charismatic vocal of all, the band up the brain-flaying brilliance so much that even the crescendoes seemingly have crescendoes.
Yet even this is usurped by the closing "Horrible Face". This one is the full, kitchen-sink punkoid Spector production job from Tim Smith (Cardiacs), the sound of Morricone cursing the bad sign he's been born under ("The lion's share of terrible things finds me here today") and everyone involved getting swept up into an orchestrally-assisted finale that is surely the last word in Scaramangas lore. To date, anyway.
Whether "Cabin Fever" will get the kudos it deserves on the back of the current Leeds-embracing scene is still debatable, but probably immaterial in the long run. What is important is that The Scaramanga Six are far too busy being the murderously suave mavericks they are to give a proverbial and instead concentrated on finishing this astonishing album: a probable career best and one of the most viscerally exciting things this reviewer has heard for yonks.
Bring on that sweet psychosis without further ado!
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