Apparently they are trying to marry Black Metal with hardcore punk. The result is something that lack any of the traits or virtues of the two constituent parts. The whole thing feels abrasive for abrasive sake. Black Metal works because it has shades of subtlety, this is just nasty and objectionable for no real reason than the members decided that was a good idea. Pointless.

Not even the fact that it has my beloved Bruce Springsteen singing ‘Highway to Hell’ can save this record. It is hotch potch of different styles and genres that fail to hang together in sort of cohesive way. It feels like scanning through the radio and getting blasts of completely different station. A complete mess.

I am very much swimming against the tide here as this will be top of many people’s lists this year, but I just don’t see the hype. To my ears it sounds like an uneasy alliance of Post Metal and Hip Hop that just doesn’t gel. I get that it is radical and I get that it is challenging so many of Metal’s conventions, but I still expect some sort of cohesive whole. I just got no sense that there was anything here apart from someone raspy rapping over some noise.

When did modern Indie become so measured, so well behaved and so dull. This is lacking that feeling of joyful rebellion. It just feels maudlin, self-absorbed and really really boring.

This is meant to be a loving homage to the garage speed rock n’roll of MC5 and the Stooges. What it lacks though is any real understanding of what made those acts so great. This is a soulless facsimile. It may be playing all the right notes, but the passion and conviction aren’t there. It comes across as very cynical bandwagon jump.

Put this in the category of appallingly bad and lacking any redeeming features. The men behind Alestorm and Gloryhammer (remember them) decide to turn their attentions to mythical Power Metal. I know that it is meant to be self-aware, ironic and has its tongue firmly in its cheek but Alestorm (and to a degree Gloryhammer) have built their careers on mixing that with a decent tune or two. This has none. It is all “ohhh look how pretentious we are wink, wink) without having one quality track. Turgid and utterly incredulous.

Mr. Clarke was in Guns N’ Roses for about five minutes in the mid-90’s (ok three years) and has traded on this ever since. He is trying to do good time boogie with some rock n roll flair but there is nothing here that we haven’t heard being done better elsewhere. It just doesn’t have the song-writing chops and instead the whole album feels staid and boring.

Well this is a prophetic album title if there ever was one, as I am so done with this band. I have really tried as I truly believed that there was something quite different here. But they are now insisting on being difficult for difficult sake and I am out. I no longer think they are revolutionary or auteurs. I have seen through their emperor’s new clothes and decided that this is just intolerable white noise with no redeeming features or arty statements.

Potentially the thirty-eighth Hawkwind album but to be honest even Hawkwind’s rapidly rotating collective of members have lost count. This is prog by numbers, that has none of the other worldliness that made 70’s and even 80’s Hawkwind such an exciting prospect. It just plods and feels like they ran out of ideas about ten albums back.

I don’t have anything against dance metal, but this is an utter mess. The electronic elements are woefully underbaked and its shifts in gear jaw rather than flow. It ends up feeling like a shunt job as opposed to a fully formed hybrid.