EXTERMINATOR

Primal Scream (album)

Yes, I know it's been out a few weeks, but I've been sufficiently encouraged by their last two singles to give this a listen. Starting off with Kill All Hippies (and of course my huge and loyal army of (three) readers know my position on this song), the next song, Accelerator, is as different as you can get as it wigs out completely with distorted guitars and stuff. The whole thing then moves along nicely through two versions of Swastika Eyes (two? you spoil us) and an instrumental called Blood Money that could have been used in that Ford Puma advert with Steve McQueen instead of The Theme From Bullitt. Even the obligatory ballad (Keep Your Dreams) has somewhat of a dark edge to it. However, the quality dips a little after this. For example, MBV Arkestra (If They Move Kill 'Em) is utter nonsense until the drums kick in and even then it sounds like a rather extreme remix of another song - which it is. However, it all pulls itself together again right at the end with Shoot Speed / Kill Light which storms away like a turkey escaping from Bernard Matthews' farm and is the ideal song to finish the album. Usually you'd expect this sort of album, with all this energy and with something interesting always happening, to be the band's debut. Not this time. It's 15 years since Primal Scream came into existence and although it's taken them that long to create an album I like, it's been well worth the wait. There's hope for Boyzone yet.

BLOW YA MIND

Lock N Load

You may remember The Shrink's Nervous Breakdown from a couple of years ago. Although little more that some really fast beats coupled with a repetitive high pitched bleeping noise, for some reason it was actually really good. Stop laughing, it was. This, on the other hand, is its younger, more refined, brother. For starters there's a rap (complete with meaningless lyrics, naturally), something approaching a tune in the background and the bleeps have been replaced with what sounds like a sampled airhorn. Unlike Nervous Breakdown, this will be huge. However, like Nervous Breakdown this is also really good. Of course, this means I've cursed the single by liking it and it's now going to bomb completely. You watch.