brando rising

I coulda sworn I sent a review of this violent fucker in yonks ago but... apparently not. Anyway, it's been a couple months, and I still play it, often and loud, usually in the car, and I have the dangerous driving fines to prov

"Brando Rising" sounds fresh, piercing, varied and they approach the six songs here from every which way, and the disc hurtles toward you with the measured savagery of a Hammer film (or a killer making his way up the stairs). There's a healthy dollop of Stooges/ Iggy influence (no surprises as singer Rip fronts the Four Stooges when he's got a few moments to spare) and as The Barman points out belwo, a few other influences. 

Don't let the influences influence you. Guitarist Kelly Hewson wields a nasty, savage guitar and is one of the few guitarists to use wah-wah and get away with it. Wah-buzzsaw? Something like that. Either way, they've got a top rhythm section which knows how to party, a guitarist who wants to rule the world and a singer who already does (so I am told). They're entertaining, intense, new, not particularly pretty and belong headlining at your local beer barn.

_{Ripley Hood in front of Brando Rising. Robert Brokenmouth photo.}

In which your scribe receives news and loses it a tad. This is a very partial review… I missed quite a few things … oh, dear.

So, an Adelaidean in Melbourne negotiates buses, trams, and other hurdles (including a Lebanese cab driver who’s lived here for 40 years and still has an accent like a wheel of cheese to a plastic butter knife) to arrive at a record shop.

With a Budget flat-bed truck outside. 

_{Brando Rising strut their stuff last weekend. Marina Valieva photo.} 

Someone from interstate recently commented that it looks like Adelaide is the place to be right now.

No, it's not. And certainly not with another inexcusable electricity price hike on the cards this year - do our Fearless Leaders have any idea what damage this is doing to the economy? No? Perhaps those protesting schoolkids could do better. Certainly they found a better cabinet in Ikea, so they must have a better idea about things than the current crop of cockwombles. 

However, the bleary light of today reveals that, had I known about the other gig last night, I might have faced a difficult decision. Missing the Yard of Retard gig, with (among others) Fear and Loathing and the first appearance of Bomber Down (featuring, as YoR so eloquently put it, "Rob Szkolik, Adelaide’as gayest man") would have caused a grave personal "torn in two" moment, as I had put my grubby paw up to see Brando Rising at the Enigma months before the gig was booked. Instead, I see the results of the Yard's gig on Fartabout and, not for the first time nor, I suspect, the last, I rather wish I could clone myself so I could do several things at once.

A Crack in the World - Brando Rising (Crankinhaus)

“A Crack in the World” is an utter cracker, and if any of you lot had recorded anything half as good as this you'd have heads as big as prize-winning pumpkins.

I mean to say, Jesus wept, lads. “A Crack in the World” gets your attention as surely as if someone has heaved a box of tinned tuna at your head.

Doesn't matter what mood you're in, put this in your slot (oo-er, missus, fnaar fnaar etc) and you'll feel like a character in a 1950s Warner Brothers cartoon who has rashly “just added water” to a mysterious sachet.