If commencing your second album with a solo blast of wah wah pedal isn’t a statement of intent, then I don’t know what is. Laika Dog are the latest band to feature Tony Wright, ex-frontman of former chart-bothering pop-metal band Terrorvision, and more recently Bradford’s most famous dry stone waller. Now back in music full time, Tony is once again out to rock hard, as signalled by the aforementioned wah wah, and the dirty sludgy riffs and crashing cymbals of new long player, ‘Mercury.’ ‘Rock’ is certainly the operative word, the dirty sludge rock furrow that Laika Dog plough being seemingly that once favoured once by the likes of Reef in the mid-nineties.
Thus, alongside the standard couple of slow numbers and the odd potentially chart friendly tune such as ‘David Frost’, we have swampy stompalongs like the album’s final track ‘Just Lately’ and ‘All The Things That Matter,’ the chorus of which is reminiscent of the formerly utra-hip, Hives.
This album will doubtless please the existing Laika Dog diehards whose fervour apparently instigated the release of their first album following a wildly enthusiastic reception to the band’s tour of UK rock clubs. It is unlikely, however, to recruit reinforcements to the legion. Whilst containing the requisite number of chugging riffs, some decent tracks and being not utterly heinous, it lacks colour and invention and sounds like it was recorded in a garage. In a bad way. Overall, an unremarkable listen.