Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
You can’t beat a good old fashioned Rock record, it has the power to turn around a day in your favour, it has the ability to shine its magnificent torch into areas of conscious that often go unexplored and it breathes for the chance to take the soul on a journey of discovery. Above all, if the lyrics strike home with perfect clarity, it has the capacity within each layered song to shake the foundations of the house to the point where the neighbours either complain or bang on the door, carrying a keg of beer and wanting to join in the party.
With Michael Monroe’s follow up to his outrageously cool Horns and Halos, Blackout States, offering more than a party for the aural sense of the listener’s night in with the stereo. It might well be worth considering phoning in sick for a couple of days, because the neighbours aren’t going anywhere and there is always a six pack and a bottle of Scotch being found somewhere in the fridge.
Joined by Sami Yaffa, Steve Conte, Rich Jones and Karl Rockfist, Michael Monroe flourishes with intense musical abandon as the album progresses, as each track takes a hammer to the speakers and requests back up in the form of T.N.T. and lyrical prose that would make a prize winning poet believe they have wasted their time trying to compete what lays beneath the reigns of Blackout States.
To have a musician play and perform so well and have the belief that musical balls must be shown in order to have a gutsy, pounding and all the trappings of stereo glory be seen to be heard throughout is a refreshing change from hearing albums that take you up to the edge but whom refuse to cross over beyond the void, beyond the self imposed boundary.
Tracks such as Goin’ Down With The Ship, The Bastard’s Bash, Good Old Bad Days, the tremendously addictive Dead Hearts on Denmark Street and Six Feet In The Ground all make Blackout States an album worth of being a successor to Horns and Halos; an album that rocks the heart out of the listener and the neighbours who delight in the stereo being played loud.
Michael Monroe’s Blackout States is released on October 9th via Spinefarm Records.
Ian D. Hall