Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Rip It Up, tear the contracts of our lives apart, into a thousand pieces which in a light breeze dance like butterflies and fall like memories, Rip It Up, start again from scratch and in the blink of an eye you would find yourself in the midst of a revolution between the ears for the mind would argue what came before will always smash the modern apart.
Not so, especially in the hands of Thunder, one of Britain’s premier Rock bands, not in the hands of a group that have done it once, did it so well that they thought they would do it over again and as the new album plays out, that persistence of expression and raging musical hunger is enough to know that tracks such as Shakedown, the fantastic The Enemy Inside, Tumbling Down and She Likes Cocaine are the simple decadence the fans have been waiting for.
Whilst it might be considered not the subject of discretion in which to highlight on an album, a certain degree of taboo surrounding the topic of recreational drug use, She Likes The Cocaine is one of the greatest songs of the band’s illustrious rock history, arguably up there with the likes of Back Street Symphony, Low Life In High Places and Love Walked In, a true venue filler in which the dedicated and the bestowed would surely gather in absolute appreciation, would blast the silence with vocally enhanced dynamite.
The album doesn’t just fit in with the back catalogue, it enhances it, it brings out the very best of the much loved personnel, Danny Bowes, Luke Morley, Harry James, Ben Matthews and Chris Childs in such a way that the idea of the band once having called it a day is now just a memory; nothing can prepare a fan for that moment, chilling it may be but sometimes the love is too strong and the music too important to truly let go.
Rip It Up, let the Rock speak for itself, let the pieces of the past float away on a breeze of admiration but also keep some back, keep Rip It Up as an example of how Rock can take you away from also ran and the interventions, this is a major contribution from the band and one that pumps the blood round the body just that little harder.
Ian D. Hall