Iron Lamb – Fool’s Gold

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The tables are turnin’ as your uterus is yearnin’…


Review by Gary Cordwell

High Roller Records

Release Date: 30 January 2015

A burst of steam, a blast of a guard’s whistle and this locomotive is on the tracks and bearing down on anything in its way. Four years on from their debut album comes Fool’s Gold, the second offering from Swedish rock ‘n roll five piece, Iron Lamb. The intervening years have seen the band pick up a second guitarist and a new vocalist – the perfect excuse, really, to ring in some changes. The production this time around is more polished and professional and the songwriting more confident and assured.

Of course, the Motorhead influence is still present and correct – new vocalist Daniel Bragman sounding, if anything, even more like the Lemster than their previous hollerer! But this band is no one trick pony (or should that be Iron Horse?). Yes, the bullet-belted spirit of ‘Fast’ Eddie stalks this album but there is more. Punk rock is a huge influence here – and I reiterate – punk rock!! Not spindly, scratchy, ska-with-guitars punk. ‘Backstabbers’ is a savage, hardcore punk thrash and there is a grubby Stooges/Ramones feel (and a nicely pounded pianner) to ‘Smile Now, Cry Later’

Poison Idea and Discharge also seem to haunt this album while ‘Pink Mist’ manages to marry frenetic, Keith Moon-style drumming to a New York Dolls glam stomp. The band’s new found confidence shines through in the small details and the risks taken. ‘Mockingbird’ utilises cowbell and handclaps and the band don dustcoats and blacker-than-black Stetson’s to deliver the Southern gothic outlaw tune, ‘Let Me Be’ – replete with Johnny Cash vocals and the classic line, “the tables are turnin’ as your uterus is yearnin”!!

The album swirls and spirals into the run off groove with another mid-paced Motorhead bruiser (they bookend this album) and there we have it – short, sweet and needing to be heard live in a dark, dingy club, your boots stuck to a beer stained floor. Perhaps this album lacks a slight hint of abandon that this kind of music needs but that’s a minor quibble – 2015 is off to a good, loud, solid start.

Iron Lamb – Fool’s Gold7.5 out of 10

Track Listing:

  1. One Way Track
  2. Smile Now Cry Later
  3. Feed The Fire
  4. Backstabbers
  5. Leave Me Be
  6. Pink Mist
  7. Mockingbird
  8. Centre Of The Universe
  9. Rip It Up
  10. Deadend Blues

 

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