Hard rock should be like Ronseal. The name says it all, it should be hard, solid and pack a meaty punch that makes the listener feel like they’ve gone fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson. In his prime.
But like the much-troubled pugilist, time hasn’t been kind. Slowly and surely, the sharp edges have been rubbed down to little more than nubs. While the death of rock and roll has been much maligned and documented, it’s with great pleasure that hard rockers Holy Mountain release their latest album Ancient Astronauts.
And calling this Glasgow trio hard would be the understatement of the musical year. A sonic tour-de-force, the new album hits hard from the off and doesn’t let up throughout the eight tracks.
Key to this assault on the earlobes is the sheer scale of the wall of sound that batters out from the work. As soon as opening track ‘LV-42666’ kicks off, the guitar riffs are hammered home with little remorse or mercy. Indeed, Pete Flett’s drumming feels like it’s Thor’s thunder hammer captured in a bottle, opened up again and unleashed in a studio. It’s also a wry reference to the work of James Cameron, put through the boisterous rock humour machine and spat out the other end.
That same energy and balls-to-the-wall brazenness is repeated down the line, with ‘100 Years a Day’, ‘Gift Giver’ and ‘Luftwizard’ providing amble material to do your neck some real damage with endless head banging. The latter is a trudging, ominous number that invokes Judas Priest, mid 90s Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath at their blackest. None more black.
Ancient Astronauts is a stonking return for a band that know how to play hard rock. That might not seem like a difficult ask, rock has never been the most complicated of musical styles. But this genre is also open to impersonation and parody, arguably more than any other type. Making a credible, calculated and above all enjoyable rock album in 2014 is a difficult task. So it’s with great pleasure that bands like Holy Mountain are still plugging away, making it happen.
