By Monk
If ever an album lives up to its name, it is this, the sixth full-length studio offering from Raging Speedhorn… no, sorry, make that Raging FUCKING Speedhorn! Because, just as the combination of a global pandemic and government inaction are doing their best to kill off the music industry as a whole (but, it will survive, if in a vastly different way to that which we recognized previously), so ‘Hard To Kill’ is evidence that you can’t keep a good band down, at least not for long.
Having initially decided to call it quits back in 2008, the Corby ragers have undergone a traumatic time since the release of their “comeback” album, 2016’s ‘Lost Ritual’, with the then incarnation of the band decimated by the departure of half its membership, not least in the form of founder and co-vocalist John Loughlin during the early stages of the recording of this opus. And then, of course, just as that process was finished, the beer bug struck and the entire Überverse was thrown into chaos…
But, if you’re going to snatch victory from the jaws of adversity, then you need to do so in a way which is declaratory and decisive, defiant and domineering – and that is exactly what RS have done, with this absolute beast of an album.
“We don’t need no reason to die” is as defiant an opening statement as you are likely to come across, and that is exactly what they hit us between the eyes with on lead single ‘Snakebite’, which is a suitably ferocious, anger-filled and fuelled starting point, pummelling its way out of the speakers and into your aural cortexes with the force of a runaway 40-tonne truck with a cargo of reinforced concrete on board. ‘Doom Machine’ eases back on the throttle slightly, as it broils, seethes and spits like a pit of vipers with the sight of Indiana Jones dangling appetisingly just out of reach. ‘Spitfire’, built on another absolutely HUGE bassline from former Hundred Reasons man Andy Gilmour, who seems to have very quickly gelled with Gordon Morison to produce some totally monstrous rhythms, lives up to its title, strafing with fiery fury, before the title track stomps what little is left of your bleeding corpse into the mud and rubs its boot heels into the depths of your wizened soul in three minutes and 18 seconds of some of the most glorious anarchy RS have laid down in their 20+ year career…
For the mid-point of the album, the ragers get positively proggy on us, with the epic grunt and grind of ‘Hammer Down’ clocking in at just shy of five minutes, but without dragging for one single millisecond as its underlying fury pumps more adrenaline than a bagful of syringes in a Russian athletics team dressing room. ‘Hand Of God’ has a big heavy chug to its riff, which punches harder than Carl Frampton’s desire to deck his former manager, and is topped off by another furious vocal from newcomer Dan Cook, who once again has blended seamlessly into the band’s overall framework.
As the album heads into its final third, ‘Brutality’ lives up to its name with its punk-inflected hardcore beatdown of the sort guaranteed to open up pits, if we ever get to the stage of being able to do so again, while ‘The Beast’ is an apt summary of this album, as it perfectly fits that description – at least until this point as, to be brutally honest, we could have done without the cover of ‘Children Of The Revolution’ which closes it out: yes, it’s a decent version, and Speedhorn stamp their identify all over it, but I’m not a fan of needless covers at the best of times and this did nothing to enhance my overall enjoyment of the album (in fact, the reference to the ‘COTR’ riff in the previous track is much more impressive).
That final, and very minor, quibble aside, ‘Hard To Kill’ is an absolute stonker of an album, and a declarative beginning to the dawn of a new era for its creators.
- ‘Hard To Kill’ is released today (Friday 23 October). You can get your copy HERE.
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