Album Review by Mark Bayross
After numerous festival appearances and a recent denting of the Top 40 with the singles I WISH I WAS A GIRL and ALL YOU EVER DO, St. Albans’ Violent Delight now release their debut album, TRANSMISSION.
Produced by Ill Niño’s Dave Chavarri and Steve Jones (as in THE Steve Jones, of the Sex Pistols), Violent Delight’s sound is just what you might expect from a collision of their respective genres: nu-metal’s wall of guitars meets punk’s snotty energy.
Nonetheless, in amongst the straight-ahead Therapy?-style rush of tracks like SAME OLD STORY, MISTAKES and opener SHATTERED, they find the time to add in some inventive guitar work (e.g. ALONE) and throw shapes to the mosh-friendly rap metal of JUMP.
For a band who no doubt take great satisfaction in abbreviating their name to VD, there’s plenty of humour to tap into here, but with a bittersweet taste throughout. Take the Blur-sounding PARENTAL GUIDANCE, a song about discovering your parents have a sex life too: “When I was watching telly / I looked up at Dad’s shelf and saw some KY jelly / Well the thoughts, they weren’t much fun / when you get the funny feeling mummy takes it up the bum”.
Contrast this with the startlingly honest “All you ever do is cheat on me / but I’m far too scared to see / I just don’t want you to ever leave me” (ALL YOU EVER DO), and you have a band with more depth than their frat-party antics may initially hint at.
Violent Delight may never change the world, hell, they’ll probably not change punk-metal either, but this is an enjoyable debut album that is bound to take their success a stage further.
