Television, the drug of the nation breeding ignorance and feeding radiation … someone once wrote. On a similar dystopian tip may I present to you Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats Wasteland. If I tell you it is a loose concept LP about misinformation and programming the thoughts of the populace, then please don’t go running for the hills, it is ace.
I belatedly fell for the primal charms of Blood Lust and missed out on the next two Uncle Acid LPs as a result, before being persuaded by my mate Martin to give Wasteland a go when it came out in 2018. I’m bloody glad I did too.
As ever Rise Above Records give us plenty of good stuff to compliment the music, lovely orange vinyl, excellent Clockwork Orange-style LP cover, car sticker and a neat lyric/credit/concept insert headed ‘Program Disc 5: Manual’*. All lovely, but does Wasteland rock? Spoiler Alert: of course it does.
The best and most straight-forward rocker on Wasteland is ‘Shockwave City’, which from the title on in is a cracker. It explodes outwards from the speakers like a, um, shockwave blowing everything aside – sounding a little like I always thought KISS should sound like, when I just knew what they looked like. It is hooky, heavy and righteous, Kevin Starrs plays some great guitar flourishes around the edges of the tune too.
Elsewhere we get atmospheric opener ‘I See Through You’ which gives us some good steady widescreen scene-setting and the moody ‘No Return’. Then we go full Iron Maiden on ‘Blood Runner’ and it is absolutely excellent too – all twin guitar intent** and rhythmic galloping as you’d expect from a band who cover ‘Remember Tomorrow’.
Side 2 opener, the sinister ‘Stranger Tonight’ kicks down the doors and boasts some absolutely excellent guitaring. Better still is the acoustic-led ‘Wasteland’ which builds up to an inexorable climax, leading into the prog-rock tinged ‘Bedouin’, which boasts another excellent guitar coda. Then, finally ‘Exodus’ which I like because it has some sharper, wilder edges than most of the other tracks here.
As always with anything vaguely concept-y I tend to ignore that aspect of it and just enjoy the music – mostly because after 31 years I still struggle to adequately explain all the nuances of Operation: Mindcrime. The lyrics and concept are both good here – who knew you could program people through constant exposure to certain ‘truths’ and make them act in certain ways?!
Wasteland is a good, solid rock LP. It doesn’t beat Blood Lust for me as my favourite Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats album but I do like it. The production, also by Kevin Starrs, is very good as is all the musicianship. The one area which could be improved for me are the vocals, they end up sounding quite samey over the course of the whole LP, that slightly treated quality. I would love to hear them add someone appropriately leather-lunged, male or female, to their arsenal, I really think it would kick the band up another notch into the stratosphere.
Heavy, dark, well-played, melodic and well thought out this Wasteland ain’t a bad place to be.
1050 Down.
PS: Really like this fan made video for ‘No Return’:
PPS: Very good interview with Kevin Starrs here. He’s an interesting guy.
*it is Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats 5th LP, I have literally just worked that bit out after owning it for 2 years.
**Maiden before Janick Gers then, you pedants!
