The first five steamrollering tracks will have you begging for mercy.
Such is the power of this opening salvo from Glasgow band
Gun, and their third album
'Swagger', now reissued by the eternally enterprising UK label, Cherry Red, with a fabulous eight bonus tracks.
At its heart,
Gun was vocalist Mark Rankin, plus the brothers Gizzi, Jools on guitar, and Dante on bass. Between them, they wrote some grittily melodic rock songs, occasionally with outside help. As on '
Swagger', there's one cowrite here with Jim (Bryan Adams) Vallance.
But
Gun never broke through. For 2 reasons. One, they weren't pop enough, and two, they were difficult to categorise. People are uncomfortable with music they can't pigeonhole.
We don't like to admit it, but we like predictability.
But for music fans who feed on the articulated dynamics of cross genre mixing and matching,
Gun were the stuff of cultdom. Put simply, for fans who like to be challenged by rock music that's gone ten rounds with rap, blues and funk,
Gun were a band sent from hard rock heaven.
That said, there's a handful of out and out melodic hard rock songs here, songs like
'Don't Say It's Over',
'One Reason' and
'Vicious Heart', that are full of chiming riffs, swaggering, hard edged verses and towering hooks. Recalling the punchy, inner city arena rock of '
Taking On The World' and '
Gallus', the band's first two albums.
The band's cover of Larry Blackmon's classic dance floor filler,
'Word Up' is truly immense. It's compelling, never too theatrical, a version that brings out the song's sensual rock rhythms.
Elsewhere,
'Stand In Line' and
'Find My Way' are pulsing, industrial, hard rock stomps, driven by muscular deliveries and sinuous melodies.
The bonus tracks are songs that either accompanied the singles or didn't make the album cut. '
Stay Forever', '
The Man I Used To Be' and '
Strange' are all tracks that appeared alongside the various iterations of the
'Word Up' single. All are good enough to have been album tracks. Another band would have.
There are covers of Lenny Kravitz's
'Are You Gonna Go my Way', and RATM's
'Killing In The Name', one a natural choice, the other one of the reasons fans love
Gun.
A smoothly assembled reissue then, with well annotated and informative liner notes from Michael Heaton, respecting one of the best rock bands Scotland's ever produced.
All we need now is a reissue of A Walk In The Fire's
'Blind Faith'.
Written by
Brian Tuesday, July 7, 2009
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