Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The ability to stand against the crowd and rage is not only underrated, it is a dying art form, one in which whilst we might disagree with the point of view of the hard stare and the two fingered salute, nevertheless makes us respect that person’s passion, and makes us believe that the all war on individuality and all forms of expressions is not won, not even convincingly.
It has been a war, there has always been a battle, one that might not be seen from the tables surrounding the policy think tank suites that houses Government, but one that is in evidence every day of the week by the working men and women as they take solace inside the George Hamilton Bar on Hamilton’s King Street West, the Gown and Gavel or any place where dreams have been strung along by those who seek to destroy a way of life.
Dirty Sleazy Rock ‘n’ Roll is a place in which to let loose, to not be on show, to find the cameras recording your every move in a world now obsessed with removing language and emotion from the everyday. Refinement is all well and noble, regeneration is a constant but when it comes to selling short a way of communication, no matter how the language may be perceived or the sense of wonderfully coloured coarseness it takes shape, then we must do all we can to allow the freedom of others to be as romantic as they want, even in the face of the bellowing cacophony that sounds like a the smack of a saucer pass being intercepted by an opposing player’s helmet grill.
It is to Hamilton’s Thunderfuck & The Deadly Romantics that such expression is informed, the delicate nature sought by some is not welcome in the arena of the rough and superbly ready approach by the Ontario band, and yet as tracks such as Drink This Party Dry, The Finger, Attention Whore, One More For The Road, Get My Hole and JaegerBomb play out with a fierce dynamic normally only found as the Bulldogs gear up to take on their local rivals, what is in evidence is the rumbling of discontent which is reaching fever pitch by a population who knows the system is determined to silence them.
An album of gravity and sublimely punishing argument wrapped up in roar that greets the energy provided as though it is a night of annihilation and one with the cheers of a free bar inside every pub throughout the land; a band that refuse to give one, typified by the anger of the unrelenting and the earthly divine.
Thunderfuck & The Deadly Romantics release Dirty Sleazy Rock ‘n’ Roll on July 26th via Cargo Records.
Ian D. Hall