Metal Hammer (UK)

UNCLE ACID AND THE DEADBEATS

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Wasteland

RISE ABOVE

Otherworld­ly retro rockers train their all-seeing eye

There seems To be some sort of deep magic(k) at work with each Uncle Acid release – an alchemical ability to craft music that seems utterly familiar but is at the same time quite unlike anything else. While peers and labelmates might explore an earthy brand of the occult, Uncle Acid eschew folklore for a seamy, urban aesthetic that parallels cinematic oddities like Peeping

Tom and Goodbye Gemini. For their fifth album the band have constructe­d an imagined surveillan­ce state that’s part Brave New World, part The Matrix and part presentday infatuatio­n with social media’s corrosive web of fake news and relentless gaslightin­g. If the themes are dark, they’re delivered with a devilish levity.

Band leader Kevin Starrs dispenses silvery melodies and cunning harmonies as though he can’t squeeze them out fast enough, his sinuous, androgynou­s vocals oozing between your brain-folds and bringing to mind Ozzy Osbourne fully indulging his Beatles boner.

Despite a reshuffled line-up, the band’s sound remains untouched, with any evolution coming in minute increments. Still, when the music’s this good it’d be foolish to hope for stylistic reinventio­n. Opener I See

Through You is powered by the ballsy swagger of a mutant Stones riff, Blood Runner is like krautrock gone NWOBHM and Bedouin is a churning, wild-eyed wig-out, while the shambling traipse of No Return threatens blank-eyed oblivion and the epic title track dabbles with acoustic instrument­ation to herald a bitter, cynical end to the Age Of Aquarius. In lesser hands this could wind up as dizzying and garish as a lost weekend in the neon-lit fleshpits of 70s Soho, but it’s testament to the band’s infinite guile that they can immerse you fully in the world they create while guiding you so subtly that the wonders they conjure seem almost commonplac­e.

 ??  ?? Uncle acid: Sir, put down the...knife? can opener? taco?
Uncle acid: Sir, put down the...knife? can opener? taco?
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