Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
You don’t fix things that are not broken, but you can enhance them by returning to a classic setting and seeing what creative juices flow from the experience, watching, anticipating what will be released when the flood gates holding back the past are removed and the barriers flung open with a flourish.
It is in that moment before release, where the dam of ideas is Locked & Loaded but straining at the leash, where the swell takes hold and the concrete in the mind buckles under the weight of production, that you realise that you are not taking a step back by wondering what the past can offer now, you are accepting that the deluge is inevitable, that creativity, no matter how you supress it, withhold it from the gaze of others, cannot, and will not, be contained forever.
It starts not with a trickle, but a burst for Germany’s Voodoo Circle as they announce to the world that the dam has been breached and with it a sense of overwhelming power released in their new album Locked & Loaded, and yet it with what many fans consider to be the classic era for the group that this cascade of emotion and raw energy returns.
Joining vocalist Alex Beyrodt once more, is Davis Readman, Mat Sinner and Markus Kullmann, and the verdict can only be one of pounding electricity, Locked & Loaded is not just raised on rock, it stands gloriously on its summit pointing the way to the future for the German band, whilst wonderfully acknowledging the past which binds all four musicians, as well as the special guests Corvin Bahn and Melissa Bonny.
This is no shotgun wedding, no papering over any cracks or simply adding to the foundations and hoping something will stick, this is creating a whole new wing to the house of Voodoo Circle from land previously allowed to lay fallow, and as tracks such as Wasting Time, Devil With An Angel Smile, the excellent Straight For The Heart and Devil’s Cross amply prove, vintage doesn’t mean yesterday’s forgotten style, it is the honest reflection that some moments never lose their sense of taste or character, and in the end all that you see and hear is elegance in the delivery and flair in the application.
The dam may break, but what it also provides is the opportunity to build back with even greater determination, to provide the class that was always on show and ready to wash over the hearts of new comers and old friends alike.
Voodoo Circle’s Locked & Loaded is out now and available on AFM Records.
Ian D. Hall