By Monk
Unless you’ve been living under a bush for the past decade or so, you cannot but have noticed that the ÜK rock scene has been undergoing a massive revival. Having been threatened to buried under a morass of nondescript indie pop and talentless TV-inspired twattage, serious music has been starting to fight back, with more and more rock bands battling and scratching their way up the previously Cowell-dominated charts (hell, as I type this Skindred are at #1 in the midweek album listings \m/). One band that has been at the forefront of this resurgence, not least in terms of their work ethic, have been Vega, who once again draw up the ‘Battlelines’ with this, their eighth and angriest, heaviest album to date.
Opener ‘Heroes And Zeroes’ kicks in with one of Marcus’ trademark big crunchy riffs, quickly evolving into a typical Vega earworm, combined with a massive melody, a solid underpinning rhythm driven by Pete Newdeck’s always concrete solid percussive dynamism and Nick’s soaring, emotive vocals which wrench every ounce of passion from every aspect of the tune. ‘Killers’ delivers more of exactly what you would expect, with another combination of riff and melody more infectious than a dose of clap in a whorehouse, while the title track takes everything Def Leppard have done in the last two decades, scrumples it up into a little ball, kicks it out the studio window and screams “go fetch”.
In line with the heavier approach the band seem to have adopted to this album, Nick’s vocals are much deeper, aging like a classic burgundy: yes, the screams and the echoes are still there, but there is something darker and grittier underpinning his delivery, as evidenced on the likes of brutally emotive and poetic ‘Don’t Let Them See You Bleed’, which sees the band explore their most vibrant alt-rock avenue to date, with a vicious hook that perfectly counterparts Nick’s visceral, angst-fuelled vocal but also counterparts the beautifully contrasting keyboard underlay, which helps the band keep their feet firmly planted in their more melodic roots.
And those melodic roots remain the stern foundation of this album. Vega may be getting slightly more experimental, embracing new ideas and exploring new avenues but they are also very cognizant of their origins, as the absolutely huge AOR homages of ‘Love To Hate You’ and ’33s and 45s’ more than amply demonstrate. ‘Into The Fire’ throws in an initial element of Bono-style phrasing (listen to that breath-snatching pant on the opening line), before once again moving into post-Leppard territory with its arena-filling anthemic.
Vega have definitely, and most defiantly, not only drawn their own battle lines with this album, but also a line in the sand which they defy their counterparts to cross. DQ is sitting opposite me as I write this, and she has just declared that “[Vega] have taken ’80s hard rock and dragged it into the 22nd Century”: I’m not going to argue with that assertion. ‘Battlelines’ is just the sort of album those of us who grew up on, and love, classic rock need. And deserve.
- ‘Battlelines‘ is released on 8 September.
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