The album certainly meets expectations and on every repeated listen begins to exceed them with ease as the strength of the tunes and song writing manage to burrow into your subconscious. The surprise to me is that there is a real mix on the album which helps to keep it fresh and exciting rather than flowing into one with nothing standing out.
Musically there is plenty for fans of latter day Stiff Little Fingers and The Alarm but it should find a wider audience and if you are into punk or classic rock I urge that you get hold of your copy of "Zed Hed" as soon as possible.
The album opens with the space rock influenced "Invocation" that builds before launching into "You Are Free" one of the early contenders for stand out track of the album. Lyrically the album moves through a range of subjects but this is one of the more overtly political tracks and has one of my favourite lines on the whole album "Video cams and satellites shine down with nephilim eyes". Steve proves here that not only is he a world class drummer but he is also a pretty mean guitarist too!
Highlights come thick and fast "Pretty Ugly" with a lyric you could imagine The Stranglers writing (although not with this arrangement!), "Get What You Want" with a great chorus and hook and the heartfelt "Room No 5" giving the album a suitable radio friendly moment as if any radio stations today still had any balls and faith in new music!
The interplay between the 2 Steves (Steve "Jonesy" Jones being the other half of this project) is evident and some snippets of studio chat hint at the comradely during the recording of "Zed Hed" - check out the beginning of "In The Blood" for instance. With an album this strong we can only hope that this will be the start of more frequent activity for the band and we won't have to wait quite so long for the next album!
Grab yours here...
BIG CARTEL (Physical CD)
AMAZON UK (Download)
AMAZON US (Download)
i-TUNES (Download)
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