The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster
Horse Of The Dog
★★★★
NO DEATH. LP
Deluxe vinyl reissue for Brighton death-punks’ ferocious debut.
They came from Brighton, a 10-legged nuisance-machine in a massive black sedan with flames along the fender, like the Ant Hill Mob hopped up on old Cramps records. But if their name and reputation suggested flailing, incoherent chaos, their 2002 debut album was a thing of focused brilliance, of feral, gutter-punk riffage hanging off vicious hooks. Two decades on, frontman Guy McKnight’s fallen-preacher holler remains a thing of dark beauty, ever shifting between Surfin’ Bird-style jabber and panic-driven screaming. And if their songs aren’t so much songs as remarkable gonzoid freakouts strung together by passages of gothic thrash, their roller-coaster thrills remain undimmed by the passage of time. Like the best comic-book characters, they might have lacked a third dimension, but Team Meat and Presidential Wave remain commendably lunatic fun.