A genius title! Wolfsbane’s All Hell’s Breaking Loose Down At Little Kathy Wilson’s Place! * (abbreviated herewith to AHBLDALKWP). I treated myself to this in October 1990 after loving the title and the cover and wondering if, signed as they were to Rick Rubin’s Def American label, Wolfsbane were actually any good.
Short answer? not really, I am sorry to say. They gave interesting, funny interviews (I particularly liked Blaze Bayley) and the title and title track of this mini-LP were inspired by the 1950’s Sci-fi flick ‘Invaders From Mars’ and I have always been a sucker for that era of anti-communist / alien invasion movies. The opening track ‘Steel’ is a half-decent rant about being stronger and tougher that the rest, but the next 4 tracks are really pants. Brendan O’Brien’s production is uncharacteristically poor too, he makes them sound like a ham-fisted Van Halen, when they should sound like a bunch of mean bruisers from the Midlands. I saw this lot play about a year after I got this and they were a storming live band, in fact I got high-fived by Blaze Bayley when he climbed up onto the balcony at Bradford St George’s Hall, but they never did get their sound down right on LP. In fact they sound a little uncomfortable with most of their own material here.
Basically skip right to the title track which is a thing of derranged genius. The music is the ballsiest here, but the best bit is the fact that Blaze does all the dialogue from the film in all the different voices – I really had forgotten just how great it was. If you haven’t heard it and fancy a bit of truly bonkers rock, download it immediately. I also love the opening lines, ‘Twilight ebbs and slowly, heaven sparkles light / From pin pricks in night’s curtain / Something comes to life’ – I mean, come on! this is brilliant stuff.
To top it all off it has a great cover too – if you hold it up to the mirror all the mysterious writing is revealed to be all about mind control probes. Lord knows how I discovered that, I obviously had much more time on my hands in those days. I bought their next LP on cassette and I’m afraid again, it just didn’t work out for me. Anyone else out there like this one?
57 Down.
* 1537 bonus points for the exclamation mark at the end.
This is actually the only Wolfsbane I own on CD (I have the debut on a cassette that hasn’t been played in over a decade). But I haven’t played that CD in years. I really need to dig it up and try it again. Thanks for this!