Album Evaluate
Eater
Duplication
CD/DL/Vinyl
Preorder now for launch 31 October 2025
Andy Blade and his twenty first Century line-up of Eater launch an album of 1976/77 cowl variations and it’s an completely sensible encapsulation of every part Punk Rock was about within the thoughts of a teenage boy in ’77. AI may by no means replicate this, because it has no idea of the enjoyment of low-cost pace and blow-jobs, says Ged Babey.
That is the album Andy Blade swore he would by no means make.
A back-to-basics, amphetamine rock’n’roll assortment that captures the fun of teenage desires/kicks/treats.
Ten songs in lower than half-hour. ’77 classics all; Breakdown/Your Era/Beat On The Brat/Exterior View/I’m Stranded/God Save The Queen/White Riot/Chinese language Rocks/New Rose/One other Lady, One other Planet. All hammered out by a bunch of younger musicians who know their chops. (Jo-Jo & the Tooth moonlighting) With Blade in his now trademark baseball cap and shades, sneering and slurring the lyrics with appropriate venomous glee.
It’s an completely implausible, pure ramalama punk rock album for purists – simply don’t anticipate the reinvention of the metaphorical wheel – simply anticipate to think about you may style the sulphate at the back of your throat and a really feel a woman (or boy) fumbling together with your flies… yeah, embrace the authenticity, the real-deal. Younger, loud & snotty punk rock. Revisited.
I wandered loaded as a crowd a nowherewolf of ache…
Of the ten songs there’s just one that was a little bit of a shit option to my thoughts: White Riot. Every other early Conflict track would’ve been preferable.
“The tracks on Duplication are primarily my favorite songs out of the seminal punk classics,” explains Blade, “earlier than punk rock grew to become considerably homogenized as a components. While it’s a covers album – it’s not only a covers album. There’s a distinction as a result of I used to be ‘there’ with my band in the course of the explosive 12 months of 1977 – these songs imply one thing to me in a visceral sense. There’s a spirit to the tracks that appears to return alive as we rehearsed them. Most significantly, nevertheless, Duplication was nice enjoyable to create and I feel, because of this, it’s – I hope – nice enjoyable to take heed to.”
It truly is. Jo-Jo on backing vocals giving little operatic trills, squeals and holding the notes complementing Blades doubletracked sneer and slur and making the entire thing sound extra distinctive and even higher.
Musically songs like Stranded, Chinese language Rocks and One other Lady get the solo’s spot on and the high-end bass-playing marks out correct musicianship amongst the thrash. The drumming is nice all through besides when it will get to New Rose as a result of no-one can hammer that out fairly like Scabies.
“Breakdown” takes us all again to a really particular time and place, to the evening in November 1976 when Eater performed their first gig with Buzzcocks.
“Breakdown,” says Blade, “was a track that caught in my head instantly. I beloved its jerky supply and lyric-spitting vibe and the actual fact it was so quick. There was a lyric sheet of the track within the dressing room that I sneaked a have a look at. ‘These aren’t track lyrics,’ I assumed – ‘this can be a fucking essay!” – it had so many laborious to scan, further size verses with lengthy phrases/phrases I’d by no means heard earlier than at simply 15 years outdated.
“I assumed – ‘Now I perceive what the essence of punk rock is – tremendous quick, but in addition clever’.”
Eater 2025 grasp the dumbness of the Ramones with equal aplomb.
Chinese language Rocks and One other Lady One other Planet are sacred songs which ought to by no means actually be sung by anybody aside from Thunders and Perrett respectively – however Blade is certified and capable of carry them off with the required respect and recklessness required.
New Rose he adapts to his personal vocal type with the help of some trickery which echoes and delays the sharp stab of Vanians ‘Wah!’ into eleven seconds of reverberations.
Andy intentionally cocks up important lyrics simply to bother the punk trainspotters and gate-keepers and since he can, true to type.
Duplication can be in Vive Le Rocks High albums of the 12 months certainly had Blade not wound-up the magazines editor big-style.
Blade has an amazing new solo album out quickly too and one other e book early subsequent 12 months…
And if cynics wail cash-in and sell-out, off they’ll fuck, as a result of Eater began their existence doing covers of the Velvets, Bowie and Alice Cooper so they’re simply doing what they’ve all the time performed…. placing the punk angle into most rock-and-roll and undoing the intellectualisation, contextualisation, mummification and museumification of punk rock.
It is a enjoyable album.
The LAST, nice punk rock album. Perhaps.
All phrases Ged Babey with press launch content material in italics
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