The second I started to listen to this album, I thought “California”. Lecherous Gaze, who quote Chuck Berry and The Damned as liked artists, in fact come from Oakland, so the grittier end of the state. Intriguingly, they describe their own music as “Psycho-delic shred-tastic ultra-hyphened rock-punk heavy jams”. Another description would be “rock”.

It all starts with crunchy rock, splashed with a bit of punk and bearing a passing resemblance to ZZ Top. “One Fifteen”, the opening track, is a good uplifting song. This sets the pattern. It’s not just classic rock though. “Reptile Minds” has a magnetic riff and the rock refrains are there in the flamboyant guitar work but the vocalist’s roaring is, while not death or black metal, still ferocious. “One Fifteen” comprises a series of good time three or four minute songs, the sort which would go down well in your local pub on a Saturday night. The guitar provides the jollity. The bass provides the rumble. It all progresses at a healthy pace. “Thing Within” is a long track at just over five minutes. More important than its length are its colour, life and dynamic structure. This is a really good song, well played and rhythmically attractive. The speed, at which these songs progress, is impressive. It helped to capture my enthusiasm, along with those sharp rhythms. I’m sure that Lecherous Gaze would be a blast as a live band. Here and there, the routine rock will break away into a more freeform, quirky passage. This happens on “Malevolent Shroud” whose cosmic wind-down could have been developed and gone on for longer, I thought. “Blind Swordsman” was a bit disappointing too, not adding anything to what we’d had but I was pleased that “X City” captured all the life and energy that lecherous Gaze specialise in, thus ending the album on a high note. There’s even a bit of Chuck Berry guitar style in there.

At its core, “One Fifteen” is a rock album. Not so exciting? Actually, Lecherous Gaze bring it to life with plenty of energy and touches which make it very enjoyable to listen to.

(7/10 Andrew Doherty)

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