Having had Megalighter bought to my attention by their excellent first EP, it took no encouragement at all to get me listening to ‘indoor fireworks’, a short (ten tracks, thirty-four minute) album from last year which is entirely aptly named as the effect of playing it is much the same as lighting up a sparkler and dancing around your living room – dangerous, smoky, liable to have someone’s eye out yet over all too soon.
Opening track ‘black hole’ sees an immediate progression in terms of sound and style with the vocals shifted from a Lemmy roar to a softer, smoother blues croon but still with enough rock ‘n’ roll bite where it counts to give any contenders pause for thought. As an opening track it’s great – it sees the band in their element and it offers a great build up with a heavy bridge section whcih is played by the band as if it was a victory parade, and with songs of this quality it should be. Of course, having eased you in gently, the band don’t waste time in getting down to business – ‘wonderland’ is stripped down, slightly sleazy, punk-infused rock which satisfyingly harnesses the energy of prime Clash (before they started monkeying about with reggae) and it has the sort of terrace chant vocals that work so well in the live environment while the guitars have real bite thanks to the gloriously raw production. Frederick Anderson has a great voice for this kind of primal rock action – rough yet tuneful he has the gritty charm of a seventies rocker who somehow hibernated through the musical wasteland that was the early two thousands and has now returned to teach the pitiful X factor stars what real music is. As if to compound this theory ‘Norwegian face’ contains the biting couplet ‘when I look into your eyes, I see the boredom I despise’ set to a furious riff and powerful, tom-hammering percussion. ‘Morning red’ is another great tune with one of my favourite riffs from the album which houses a groove alongside its punk bite that recalls vintage manic street preachers while the chorus is shamelessly poppy in a Wildhearts kind of way and Frederick’s voice has that worn Lemmy tone that I remember from the first EP.
Once again highlighting their penchant for sensibly naming their songs, ‘Pulverize’ does exactly what it says on the tin with furious guitars and drums doing their best to outdo each other over the tracks brief run time. Better still is the Appetite for destruction swagger of ‘Poseidon’, possibly the most ambitious track on the disc, with a watery guitar sound recalling ‘submission’ and a brilliantly melodic chorus. ‘Inner city sumo’ is rather less subtle, rather like the bar fight following the wild party, and Lasse H. Nilsen sounds like he’s doing his best to actually destroy his kit. Going anywhere but up at this stage would be a crushing disappointment so it’s a good thing that ‘back again’ is another fantastic track with a massive sounding riff powering the verse while the rather odd percussion shows a band who are more than capable of a technical approach providing it doesn’t mess with the power of their songs.
Having got the adrenalin out of their system finally, it’s time for a trip to a Smokey blues joint (with Keith Richard propping up the whiskey coated bar) for ‘grab it’, a reflective and rather beautiful (if rather rough) gem that contains a glorious solo played with soul rather than precision which would seem to be the band’s unshakeable creed. Final track ‘new humans’ closes in fine rocking style with another storming riff and a great vocal performance and once again I’m left floored by the quality of an album that I’ve been listening to off and on all week despite the huge pile of material that I have to review.
Once again Megalighter offer up something for any serious rock fan. Taking bands such as the stooges, the clash, guns and roses, sex pistols and rolling stones as their cue, they offer up a thrilling contemporary take on classic rock and if the first EP was a belter this surpasses it on just about every level. Memorable, melodic and often very exciting, this is a great, classic, enthralling rock album. If you dig huge guitar riffs, soulful vocals that veer between Joe Strummer and Lemmy and heavier-than-hell drumming then this is most certainly your new favourite band.
