Many bands have been down the route of blending elements of classic hard rock and grunge with often mediocre results. But The Rattlebacks are different gravy altogether. And if you fell upon their appetite-whetting EP Kink, you will understand that this mob are worthy of a right bigging up with the release of their debut album Sidewinder.
The Rattlebacks – Sidewinder
Release Date: Out Now
Words: Brian Boyle
By bigging up, I am not talking about the reckless mass fanfare constantly created by the English football media over any up-and-coming player who can kick a ball in a straight line with both feet. I am taking proper bona fide excitement, and as it should and always be, the proof is smack bang in the tunes.
Opener The Taste is immense, moody and abrasive. It’s as if Black Sabbath and Soundgarden had a one-night stand and spawned a lovechild.
A highly charged Thrash heavy riff of the brilliantly titled Dementia Lounge grinds right through you like a Heavy Metal power tool and then takes you freewheeling down a lyrically dark path. If this tune does not make you giddy as a kipper for this band, nothing will.
With Gods, you get a proper taste of the band’s attitude, and with in-your-mush lyrics like “let me tell you fuckwits something”, it evokes memories of the first spin of Guns N’ Roses’s middle-fingered It’s So Easy. A moment of sheer badassery.
How Calm The Silence unashamedly declares its love for the Grunge era and would have been good enough to run alongside the big hits of the genre’s glory years.
While there’s not a remote hint of a filler, there are a few slow burners in Please Me and Swing, but they have plenty about them to have you going back in again.
But when you feel the force of barnstorming tracks like Open Your Mind and Waste coming at you like a hail of bullets, anything you may consider a negative becomes very trivial.
For a debut album, the band from the Bohemian streets of Brighton sound an extremely well-seasoned unit who have been rattling out long players for years. The maturity of the beautifully sombre ballad Behind You is the work of a band brimming with expertise that more established acts are still trying to capture.
And the performance of vocal hero in the making Josh Clarke giving you goosebumps in places you did not know you had is one of those ‘I remember the first time I heard that’ moments.
Ballads aside, though, this band’s modus operandi is to shock and awe you with denture-rattling rock ‘n’ roll tuneage, and they send you packing with the stomping closer Lazy Brian and its “lazy fuck” expletive ringing in your ear.
“This debut album has been a lifetime in the making,” the band said, “made with the sole intention of reinvigorating the hard rock genre. These fans don’t want rehashed versions of what has been before. They want a band forging their own path, and this is the first taste of us doing just that.”
“One can see why The Rattlebacks are another UK band about which people are taking notice,” Paul Hutchings said back in April, having covered their show at Fuel Rock Club, Cardiff, with Toledo Steel.
“Hard rock fans have deserved better for far too long,” the band said, “and we believe we have delivered the record that fans of the genre have been missing for decades.”
The Rattlebacks have set the bar ridiculously high for themselves with Sidewinder, but you get the feeling they have a lot more up their sleeves.
