Steering Wheel Music 9

Metallica - Hardwired...to Self-Destruct, album review

A Run of Ps

I wrote a run of Metallica album reviews here, and if you want to read the elaborated search for nuances where there wouldn’t seem to be that many, this is the place to put your feet up and spend a little while reading.

I mention because it struck me listening to their latest Hardwired – a hardly apocalyptic thought – that it is essentially more of the tried and tested successful same, predominantly machinegun riffing, and thus an onomatopoeic, empathetic and plosive one-liner would suffice as review: the puissance of pulsating pulverisations.

I actually have some pride in the elongated efforts mentioned, but this will do for this release. The title track says it all lyrically and succinctly too: we’re so fucked, shit out of luck, hardwired to self-destruct.

Cadillac Music

The Answer - Solas, album review

Nulled Noggin Knockin'

No longer, it would seem, just Rock, retro or nu, as fine as that is, this latest from Irish band The Answer still purveys the scorchers but in tracks like Beautiful World especially, the palette has been filled with a broader range of complex vocal and instrumental colouring. This is an expansive song. Battle Cry is an acoustic rouser that again breaks from riff roots, folk fusing within with a rallying vocal chorus, or as it tells us, you are an anthem on the radio.

Just in case, along comes Untrue Colour, all riff and Cormac Neeson in fine voice, though this too morphing into anthem and a hint of 80s synth. Interesting. Thief of Light is echoing guitar and the sweetest vocal chorus before this too surprises with its anthemic core [with different lyrics guys, this could have been your Christmas single, and forever payday].

Being Begotton has some balladic rock blues, Neeson restrained yet powerful in the early vocal focus, and the rises within the whole are sung with passion.

Left Me Standing brushes with the echo of Thin Lizzy, and Demon Driven Man pulses with real rock strut. That leaves the opening title track as the expected one, not saviour, but a signature sound that still hints at the widening developments to follow. The conscious shift in direction signposted, this album will reveal tangents some headbanging fans may find difficult to knock their noggins to. I like the broadening, but will also welcome the return.

Two Faces Music 11

Ennio Morricone - Morricone 60, album review

Shhhh - The Empathy of a Cover Picture

If I said it out loud, I’m sure I could think of many examples, feeling I had to, but if I just write it here, like a whisper, and because I’ve just listened to this album’s version of the song, were I to ask, quietly, what music moves me the most, I would reply softly and undemonstratively Ennio Morricone’s song-score Deborah’s Theme.

This choice is definitely linked to the first time I heard it when watching for the first time, obviously, the film Once Upon a Time in America. The theme runs throughout the film [and whole soundtrack] in a number of variations, but it is always intensely emotive in its orchestral beauty, and plaintive about lost love, though also powerfully but negatively about the horror of abused passion.

The most personally moving music should actually be John Martyn’s Head and Heart, and probably is, or Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, or Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings [all the clichés, I know, again], or in fact any other number of John Martyn songs, but right here right now it is Deborah’s Theme.

This whole album of Morricone music arranged and conducted by the man himself after 60 years of writing film-scores is excellent, not least his gunslinger groundbreakers.