Anthemically inclined Welsh rockers go for melodic rock’s jugular.
You can’t help feeling that the title of Those Damn Crows’ third album may have been informed by the seismic global events that have taken place since they broke into the Top 20 of the album chart with Point Of No Return in February 2020. Musically there’s an impatient feel to their best songs, which seem filled with a compulsion to seize life by the lapels – possibly a sentiment many others will be feeling after a stop-start couple of years during which traditional rock’n’roll thrills were severely restricted.
There’s a driving thrust to album opener Fill The Void, fuelled by a revving riff and Shane Greenhall’s authoritative vocal presence. Likewise Man On Fire is an exhilaratingly high-tempo romp. The band are best when they marry vibrant sentiments and an unbridled rhythm section – IAm ramps up the defiance, one foot on the monitors, one fist shaking at the forces that would threaten our freedoms as it refers disparagingly to ‘lunatics in power… with blood on their hands’.
That said, there are times on this record when their penchant for chugging softrock texturesor the defiant power balladry of
