Strawberry Blondes rise up to be crowned!
It's a fairly popular belief that punk rock originates from here in Blighty, so thank fuck for the band Strawberry Blondes who are probably the best British punk in over 20 years!
Starting off with wartime sirens, the album then kicks straight into the album title song, 'Rise Up' giving us a taste of what the album will be like, with it's high octane street punk with rasping vocals and rock'n'roll guitars. The band have suggested that they are fans of Rancid, The Briggs and Time Again and it is elements of these bands that we have here. Each song are short sharp blasts of punk anthems, like, 'Rebel, Rebel' whereby Mickie Stabbs screams out, "All the punks and the dreads // and the rude boys!" over the hard guitars. All these songs here encourage crowd participation with many opportunities in each song to shout back lyrics!
There is more than a nod towards The Clash in, 'Johny Two Comes' which sounds like it could be covered as a rockabilly number if it was slowed down a touch, whilst 'Misfit' could be a Ramones song if they trashed it up, shaving their hair off and jumping around like loons. 'End Of The World' is straight up punk, whilst in, 'Kingmob' over the chugging guitars from Mac Mayhem, Mickie shouts out, "Brothers and sisters // we are the heavy duty disciples // In order to survive we steal, cheat, lie, forge deal and kill!" It's a song that has the most melodies whilst not losing any of the balls and toughness infused within the song or attitude.
There is an unexpected addition of Ska brass in, 'Beat Down Babylon' but the high tempo and hard rocking punk never lets up, whilst 'Bricks Under The West' has a touch of the unsigned American's Last Action Zeros in the raw catchy punk rock. There are thumping drums from Joey Briggs, and thick bass from Johnny Rocks in the anthem 'I'm A Punk Rocker And I'm Never Going To Fall In Love' which is The Clash meets Rancid.
The rawness of Mickie's voice is one of the strong points of the band, and this can be heard in it's full sore-throat glory in, 'Young Free N Easy'. It's worth noting how good the back up singing of Mac and Johnny, as they compliment the vocals perfectly. There is more ska in the real sing-along bar room punk of 'Rip It Up', whilst 'Viva Havana' is a little more like Left Alone. The last song is a remix version of, 'Beat Down Babylon' which is a cross between 2Tone and reggae mixed with some electro, sounding a little like something that Tim Armstrong might conceive, and seeing as Strawberry Blondes have toured with both Rancid and The Aggrolites this is none too surprising. They have also recently toured with the other Hellcat Records punkers Time Again, which is all the more strange that they are not on the record label, but this is only good news for Deck Cheese Records, as here they have a real catch.
There are a couple of decent punk bands in UK, Haddonfield being one of them, but without doubt this is the best British punk album of the past 10 years and certainly one of the best, if not the best punk albums of the year! Good work fellas! 'Nuff said.