Do you like your hair big, and your denim doubled? Do you miss the days when there weren’t a multitude of metal genres and subgenres, with tuts and sneers from assorted divided camps? Hell, do you miss the days when hard rock and heavy metal were interchangeable terms? If the answer to those questions posed so inanely by this scribbler is yes, then get ready to rock, sorry, “GET READY TO RAWK”, to Band of Spice’s ‘By The Corner of Tomorrow’, the brain child of former Spiritual Beggar, Spice.
‘The Fading Spot’ starts with a time-tested riff that will have you barking at the moon, and once the drums and bass pummel in, the era of back combing and bandanas is thoroughly invoked. The same warm and familiar path journeyed with the follow up ‘Call Out Your Name’, a track that has fingerless leather gloves punching the air woven into its very DNA. Following the brief instrumental introspection of ‘Tehom’ which sounds remarkably like it should in fact be the intro to an as yet unwritten doom number, the headbanging beats return with ‘The Sharp Edge’ that halfway through slows into an altogether more sedate rock crawl. Title track ‘By The Corner Of Tomorrow’ starts with the slow introspective guitar strum that had lighters raised in the air of rock concerts of old as the pace is taken down a notch and the audience invited to sway along rather than stomp, and as was also tradition, the follow up ‘Midnight Blood’ ups the pace, plants a cowboy boot firmly on the front of stage monitors, and swaggers out of the speakers with a cocksure confidence. After a couple more stompers, the album closes out with the once mandatory ballad/slow one ‘Rewind The Wind’, all gentle strums, and slightly countrified Southern rock string bending.
There is really nothing new or innovative in this album, and for once that is not a criticism. ‘By The Corner Of Tomorrow’ takes the timeless sounds that I grew up to and put them together in a package that is cleanly and expertly executed, and to those who consider anything recorded before 2010 as “Old School”, it may well be a refreshing new sound. It could that be the addition of the energy and raw edge of a live show elevate the songs to a new level, and indeed, that is what I consider the acid test, so if Band of Spice hit the road in the forthcoming days, I’ll happily spend my money to see them.
(6.5/10 Spenny)
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