Octo_Russ

The Almighty [Just Add Life]

Well here's something different than the usual in my Blog, i heard a little bit of The Almighty, and i liked them, so when i saw this going on Ebay, i thought i'd give them a try, and i'm glad i did, the visuals are very interesting indeed [and that's one of the things that attracted me to this disc], not housed in your usual see through plastic case, but rather an opaque green plastic case, with two shades of green, with stickers on the plastic back and front, i like it, i like it a lot! [design by Storm Thorgerson & Jon Crossland], you can make out the booklet under the front plastic, which is the same as the sticker on the front [photography by Tony May & Rupert Truman], it's really quite ingenius, designed by the same guy that did a lot of Pink Floyd album covers.

The Almighty were formed in 1988 in Scotland, and this album came out in 1996, the band members are,

Ricky Warwick - Vocals and Guitars

Pete Friesen - Guitars

Stumpy Munroe - Drums

Floyd London - Bass and Vocals

The first thing i notice about the music, is the drums, and the Drummer Stumpy Monroe is brilliant, with the gorgeous sharp crack of the drumkit, rather like the band Therapy?, there's nothing worse than mushy vague drums, or drums recorded far back in the mix, the tracks that really impressed were 1-2, 4 & 10-11, and in giving these tracks another short spin, i find that it's track 10 '360' and track 11 'Feed The Need' that are the best.

Track 10, '360' is probably the better, it's a tremendous song, it starts off with the most fantastic drum intro [0:00-0:04+], the nice sharp crack of rolling drums, while in the background there's a low growling bass guitar, like a motorbike with it's throttle on low, and then the chugging lead guitars come in [0:04+], and the sneering vocals come in with 'you're talking to me!' [0:13+] nice opening vocal gambit that!, and the second half of the first verse gets louder [0:24+], with louder drums, and a rhythm guitar, and probably the most meaningful lines of lyrics, 'putting words in my mouth, that i can't spit out', the chorus is a nice hit [0:36+], with the drummer joining in the chorus bits, and right at the end of the chorus the chant 'pressure, pressure, press-ure-er-ure!' [0:51-0:59], right afterwards comes back those rolling snappy drums [1:00-1:07+], with the motorbike throttle bass guitar, and this is the same vibe as at the beginning, but reprises just have that knack of sounding so much better the second time around, this is the wonderful highlight for me, later the short screaming guitar solo wails in [2:08-2:24], and right at the end the intro rolling drums come back in [3:05+], and it's these that fade out to excellent nothing.

It's a disc that i've only played twice, but even while giving it an extra spin on some tracks just now, to review this disc into words, i can feel a tremendous excitement, as here in my hands i have another disc that will surely become a treasured recording, and will be a great asset to my growing disc collection.