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Nobody needs reminding that Birmingham has done its bit for the rock and metal world – time and again. Whether Voodoo Johnson can follow in the foot stomps of the greats is not up for discussion here.

But what they do have is potential, commitment and a real drive. This is their debut album, but it’s delivered as if they’ve already got vast experience behind them.

These aren’t so much ingénues as five musicians who’ve taken inspiration from grunge, cranked it up with a little stoner expertise, and added a touch of classic hard rock. Yet, while so many of their influences are American, what comes out is definitely and defiantly British.

End Of The Empire, Feel Karma and Burn are the sort of songs that could easily capture the zeitgeist. There are flaws – a couple of songs could have been shaved off – but it’s a promising start.

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.