(Alive Records)

Gothic punk stompers unleash fourth album

Brimstone Howl are four young men from Nebraska who sound like they’ve just returned in their time machine after a jolly afternoon of thumping Mods in Brighton Beach. Their latest album We Came In Peace (recorded by one-time White Stripes collaborator Jim Diamond) is a sneering and surprisingly three-dimensional rock & roll record. No-nonsense opening tracks They Call Me Hopeless Destroyer and A Million Years sound like a brylcreamed, black-clad alternate universe version of Radio Birdman, while they come across as fearsome blues lurchers in Obliterator. There’s even a catchy pop song in Easy To Dream which slows down Them’s Here Comes The Night riff and adds echoey Spector piano and twanging Link Wray guitars to make a deliciously dark concoction. And a few grey sky soundscapes aside, We Came In Peace moves along at a rattling pace, with lots of tumble-along rockabilly rhythms, stinging guitar and Lux Interior-via-Jon Spencer howl-croon vocals. Quite fabulous.

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MATT THROWER

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