Fourth album from these unrepentant British fire spitters. The beauty of this band is that everything is right up-front.
From the album’s cover (a gorgeous, Famous Monsters-y painting of a bloodied but unbowed Satan) to hammer-to-the-head song titles like Eat Dust and Evil Blood, Lucifer Star Machine let you know from the first chord that this is gonna be about blood, guts and searing, heavy-duty, puke-on-your-shoes rock’n’roll.
Stylistically they wrap frequently pretty 50s-era melodies around brain-rattling punk’n’roll guitars and slather it all in a grimy, greasy atmosphere of some neon-splattered B-movie.
Highlights include the Misfits-y death crooner Baby When You Cry, the hooky sleaze rock of Midnight Crawler, and the punky scream-along anthem Cruel Hearts.
The title song is a fucking ballad, but luckily for the more feral rockers among us they stick that one at the end.
