Do you remember (I used to fuck ) People Like You Records? I think it is still going but back at the turn of the millennium there seemed to be a new punk ‘n’ roll album out every week from them. Y’ know the sorta dirty rawking affair that your nan could still twist to and your good ole ma would think was just a little bit fruity – like Grease without the rude bits cut.
Lucifer Star Machine, who hail from Hamburg via London and Scandinavia play the kind of toe tapping bar room greaser rock that Sweden used to vomit out all the time two decades back. Think Turbonegro, Hellacopters or The Happy Revolvers with a touch of Volbeat. What with Michael Monroe still treading the boards there is definitely still the need, the need for sleaze.
But is it any good? Well yeah, yeah it is. Or should that be yaayah. It’s balls out “dumb” rock and roll and I say that with love and respect. So much music is over thought and over wrought these days. Sometimes it is nice to switch your work head off and boogie to “Cunt of Destruction” and “Censorshipped”. There is no reinventing of the wheel here just foot on the monitor bare chest beneath leather jacket (I imagine) testosterone silliness. When Tor Abyss hawks and spits in the middle of the latter song the cartoonish nature is straight out of the Sex Pistols textbook and I loved it. When it segues into “Purgatory Souls” things pick up the pace into a hectic early Misfits gallop but filled with glorious cheesy guitar licks.
Talking of Misfits there are a few tracks on Satanic Age that have the crooning style of the Michale Graves era or Social Distortion. As a fan of Famous Monsters and American Psycho (fuck Graves politics) – I enjoy it when Abyss gives his vocals a little more soul. Naked City melds this with a NoFX type drum beat that gives a sombre track a trampoline bounce.
The album is 13 songs which is a little too long and I find myself wandering from the path a couple of times. It is about 33 minutes between the end of the title track and Till Death which book ends the collection. The album goes out on a bit of a low ebb with the final track being a little too cookie cutter for me but it did not stop me clicking back to the beginning for another dose of the Devil’s era.
This album is predictable but fun and can fill a hole during a rawk famine.
(6.5/10 Matt Mason)
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