jettblack get your hands dirty

Released: 12 July 2010 Label: Spinefarm

It’s a total relief to have to say that this British band - who are intent on playing 80s style hair metal - are actually a breath of fresh air. How so? I hear you gargle, when I am always complaining about the out-of-date cliché ridden 80s rock being released by European groups in the 21st century.

Basically Jettblack are a fundamentally good band who write great songs.

Take drums, bass, guitars and vocals, add distortion and let them rock out. It’s an obvious recipe, but you’d be amazed at how often this genre can be ruined by getting sterilised in the recording studio. So many 80s style bands have no testicular matter to speak of musically; the songs are more polished than your grannies favourite ornaments. Any edge has been honed away into a generic sounding, multi-layered vocal soufflé of simpering commerciality.

It’s supposed to be metal. It’s supposed to RAWK. It’s supposed to have some balls!

Jettblack literally from the first second to the last, on the hugely impressive Get Your Hands Dirty, show every other retro hair-metal band out there how it’s done. The guitars have got a proper “rock” sound; distorted and heavy. The lead breaks are impressive and really nicely played, full of expression and articulate, without being just technical exercises in cascading scales of indulgent wankery.

The opening tracks Slip it On and Two Hot Girls, really set the feel-good, sex-obsessed, tone of the album, with some amusing lyrics and ballsy riffs. I was reminded of Skid Row’s Slave to the Grind-era output, in that the guitars have plenty of bite, but the melody and hooks are still there too, to keep you humming the tune afterwards.

Fooled by a Rose is a slower paced chugging number that accelerates into a terrific climax, and leads nicely on to the power ballad War Between Us proving that the guys can deliver a perfectly balanced album of genre staples.

There are some excellent songs on here; Not Even Love is an assured, swaggering anthemic ballad, with a wailing guitar melody, classic bass line and an epic chorus, rounded off by a blistering solo, and the epic seven and a half minute album closer Innocence, which meanders through acoustic delicacy and slow heavy chugging riffs. Surely that’s a record length for chorus driven commercial rock?

There is also a healthy dose of humour too, again elevating the proceedings far and above the endless irony-free po-faced European rock that floods the metal press, with songs like When it Comes to Lovin’ and the storming Mother****er with an opening riff almost fast enough to qualify as a thrash tune!

Simply put, this is a great album, by a very promising band. If you like honest old skool hard rockin’ metal with bags of attitude and a sense of humour, then Jettblack are the real deal. The bluesy vocals are great, the guitar playing is great and the songs are great. Its as simple as that!

by Steven Hargraves