You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

The second album from this Melbourne crew is a real rush of sweaty rock’n’roll, melting into dirty melodies and a love for thrusting boogie.

Of course, you can hear elements of Airbourne on the pacey Blood Money Blues or the detonating Sinking Ships, but there are some nice twists here as well.

The Fall has a smokey nastiness, while Made Of Stone is a blues-wrapped anthem. Naturally, this diversity never leads too far away from the body-shaking attitude that punctuates The Way It’s Always Been, Circus or Beaten Dog. Massive aren’t attempting to do anything unusual or groundbeaking, they’re just having a good time with a vibrant sound, and expect you to feel the same way. They’re tight in a loose way, professional with a smirk of spontaneity, and vocalist Brad Marr carries a welcome sneer in his delivery. Massive have the lived-in sound of something fresh.

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.

Latest