Thursday 14 July 2011

Wrathchild - Stakk Attakk (1984)

The hairspray alone must have cost more than the production of the record! UK's Wrathchild are glam to the hilt, owing much to the fuzz sleaze sounds of Ramones, Stooges, New York Dolls, Hanoi Rocks. And I really do like it. It's not brain busting, for it only exists to create a dingy, sordid atmosphere, and every track, which sounds like it's been recorded in a nightclub toilet, reeks of bimbo fumes and leather. There's such a trampish splendour to it all, and musically I'm getting a heavy metal Adam Ant!! All tracks are anthemic and trashy, chanted choruses over a loose, punky guitar and clattering tin can drums, fave cuts being 'Too Wild To Tame', the sickly 'Sweet Surrender' and leather-studded 'Tonite'. Pales in comparison to Crue's monstrous 'Too Fast For Love', but 'Stakk...' is clearly happy to ply its trade down some backstreet alley in downtown Soho. Far more believable than most, and far more trashed than a majority of US glam acts who got away with pretending for too long. Boasts the sort of album cover that if you'd shown your dad he would have kicked you out the house!

7/10

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