Think of Australia, think of rock music, and probably the first, and for some only, band you’ll think of would be veteran stadium fillers AC/DC, or maybe their young clones, sorry, potential successors Airbourne. To be added to that list of simple hook laden rock should be Convent Guilt, although rather than being blues rockers, first impressions are that rather than worship at the altar of the venerable brothers Young, they are far more in thrall to that oh so influential period of sound that belongs to the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal.
‘Guns For Hire’ opens with a riff that could easily have been extracted from an early Witchfinder General recording session; even the title ‘Angels in Black Leather’ reeks of an age of patchouli soaked denim, although as their lyrics say “blue denim is nice….black leather is better.” ‘Don’t Close Your Eyes’ thuds out with more than a hint of Saxon swagger, whilst a touch of early Maiden is more than apparent in the chugging bass line of ‘Perverse Altar’ and its guitar harmonies, the vocals being far more the pub growl of Di’Anno than the operatic howls of Dickinson; it is so easy without having the vaguest idea what the band look like to imagine a uniform of long hair and patch bedecked cut-offs, an image reinforced by the throwback retro album cover of four metal horsemen riding to battle like ‘Warriors of Ghenghis Khan.’
With ‘They Took Her Away’ the band move across the sea from Britain to Ireland for a combination of angry acoustic Celtic protest tempered by the hard rock of Thin Lizzy before hopping back on the ferry for the title track ‘Guns For Hire’ with a big chunk of angry folk punk being added to the metal mix, a sneering delivery that suffuses ‘Desert Brat’ and its simple head banging beat.
Nothing in the delivery of the album is unnecessarily complex, nor are the rough edges polished away by an over enthusiastic engineer, and for that Convent Guilt are to be congratulated. Sometimes with music is it good to get away from the all too desperately clever and self-aware and just revel in simple stripped back metal and rock, a sound that Convent Guilt delivers. After a few listens to the album I have an inexplicable urge to put on an old Motorhead shirt, drink Strongbow, and head bang to some Angel Witch played through a crackly cassette deck; what’s that all about?
(7/10 Spenny)
26/01/2015 at 4:34 pm
If the link above doesn’t work, try cutting and pasting the below:
https://www.facebook.com/ConventGuilt
26/01/2015 at 5:29 pm
Link fixed!