Left Side Brain- 'Riffrospective: Ten Years of Left Side Brain'
As Left Side Brain's Oli says, 'Very few bands make it into double figures as a going concern, let alone kick ass ten times harder than when they started.' The marking of a decade of existence has prompted a lot of celebrating from the LSB camp, with a special homecoming gig in Bristol scheduled this November, and the release of their fourth album; a 'best of' cheekily entitled 'Riffrospective: Ten Years of Left Side Brain'. If there's one thing to get me in a good frame of mind for something, it's a bit of good old fashioned word-play. Excellent work, chaps.
A decade is a ruddy long time. And to condense ten years' worth of blistering rock n' rolling onto one single album must have been as hard as choosing between your own children. But 'Riffrospective' is an excellently compiled presentation of the backbone of LSB. Pure and unquenchable roaring riffs. Yes, riffs. Endless riffs; as far as the eye can see and for as long as the ear can take. Chunky riffs, heavy riffs, high-tempo riffs, ballsy riffs... as many riffs as you can shake a stick at. Rifftastic, no less. Listening to this album, you can picture the roasting energy you would have got from any one of their hundreds of live shows over their touring career to date. That is the beauty of a 'best of'... it really can be filler-free. When it comes to the unyieldingly hard and heavy approach of LSB, thirteen tracks of choice ear battering can make for quite the elating, albeit exhausting, experience.
'Exit Route' makes for the most splendid of openers. The opening riff actually instantly brought to mind the tasty excitement of the first striking out of 'Sabotage' by Beastie Boys... which is never a bad comparison to draw. The crunching punches to the gut of many of the tracks from 2009's 'Collider', such as 'Weaponise' and the teeth-chatteringly heavy bassline in tunes like 'Chewer' batter the atmosphere like a hard-man fresh out of 'Lock Stock', beefed up on steroids. There's a definite sense of taking out the stresses of the world in melodic meatiness. Tracks like 'Sayonara' and classic 'Well Well Well' almost twin the sound of the late great metal-dabblers Reuben, who used to tour with LSB in the early days. Earlier material from debut album 'Equal and Opposite', like 'Uncomfortable' and 'Clout' have drawn comparisons to a mightily souped up version of Ash in the past, and that is not a bad equivalence. The vocals on these earlier tracks even remind a little of a way-back-when incarnation of Grant Nicholas.
The album closes on an utterly soaring high with two pant-wettingly good riff-scaling tunes. The penultimate song, 'Colloblast', with its sexy bastard of a guitar smoulders with intensity from start to finish. The closer, 'Figures', from their first album, is LSB at their vocally melodic best. It makes for a nice touch to end this 'Riffrospective' on a nod back to the beginnings of a decade's culmination of rock n roll. Altogether, this is a fine album. It sweats muscular and ballsy riff-riddled rock from every figurative orifice. It also stands up as a 'best of' in the truest sense of the world, a collection of the best that has been, rather than padding it out with half-baked new material. Commendable proof of plenty to celebrate and much to be proud of for Left Side Brain.