The Adjusters
Reckless Relations
Zodiac Killer

Snarky, shameless, sleazy, Bator-bitin’ rock n’ roll from a bunch of finicky young upstarts that, by all accounts, oughtta be playing video games or workin’ some mindless part-time job after school, not signing themselves up for dereliction duty, cursed to mumble and stumble their way through a life of whiskey-swillin’ and ne’er-do-wellin’. The righteous punk rock that drips off of Reckless Relations, The Adjusters’ debut full-length, easily does their homeland proud (that’s England, in case you’re wondering) and will ignite in you a raging flame of hope for rock n’ roll’s oft bleak and soggy future. I mean, just dig all that twinklin’ ivory, man! And those teenage riffs with the blues-infused solos and glam pop hooks. Killer! The Adjusters hand out fistfuls of silk scarf pomp and back alley stomp in equal measures here; name your favourite old school degenerates and I guarantee they sound just like ‘em. But the kicker with these lads is that they also sound like the best part of every decade since the 50s, which includes, but is not inclusive to, Chuck Berry, The Stooges, The Joneses, and hell, even Social Distortion. I don’t think I’ve heard raw, glistening energy like this since Silver’s 2004 debut, White Diary, and that album is fucking brilliant. If they keep this up, The Adjusters are well on their way to being bloody brilliant as well.

Listen to “Kickin’ Down the Doors” from Reckless Relations!

The Dangerous Aces
…Deny All Responsibility
Self-Released

I’ve got a gonzo rock journo friend over in Merry ‘Ol who I wrote with for many years when we were both stalwarts of Sleazegrinder’s legendary jive cotillion. We spent a lot of time in the trenches together doing our part for the Super Rock Revolution. His name is “Medicine” Stu Gibson and he’s the finest, marbled-mouthed, mutton-chopped, pub crawling, rabble rousing psycho cowboy you’ll ever have the fortune of reading. His lust for loose-lipped loquaciousness knows no limits and is matched only by his love for late-night libations, which no doubt leaks into the lackadaisical lyrics of his lordly lamentations. You have to read him to get him, and even then you still might not get him, but that’s okay because Medicine Stu can play a git’ just as well as he can stroke a pen. He’s not afraid to put his pounds where his pucker is, and as such is best known as the soused singer and axe slinger for country punk heroes The Medicine Bow. But when the Bow breaks, the cradle must continue to rock, so Medicine Stu is gutter-bound with his guitar to find stardom among the sewer rats with a rag-tag racket of Manchester mayhem, The Dangerous Aces.

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Kids are the new zombies, aren’t they? It seems every other horror movie has got evil children running amok. Or, if they’re not the source of all the trouble, they’re the ones who can communicate with it or sense it or see it and know what the hell is going on before anyone else. Either way, if there’s a kid in a horror movie, chances are he/she is crazy evil or crazy intuitive, which does not bode well for the older people around them who never tend to believe either scenario when it’s happening. Ah, horror plot gold!

The Children is another in a long line of womb-quivering flicks where the fruits of someone’s loins turn out to be awfully rotten. So it goes. In this case we’ve got two families enjoying Christmas vacation at a swank cottage in the backwoods of England somewhere (a somewhere the police can’t come when summoned, of course). For completely unknown reasons, the children start getting sick and this sickness seems to breed and cultivate a lust for blood. Oops. Turkey dinner is ruined.

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