I suspect that this may ruffle some feathers but from the first crash of a chord here, there is a question that needs to be squared up to. Philosophy 101: If Airbourne took a template from a thirty year old photograph of AC/DC, what the Hell are Blackbird doing using a five year old Airbourne template? I mean who exactly is the inspiration here?
Yeah, German newcomers Blackbird sound a lot like Airbourne. Who (for all you under-rock lurkers) sound like a young AC/DC with a smidgeon of Cinderella replacing the smidgeon of punk the original Aussies had. Jeez the singer in Blackbird even talks like Bon Scott here. Not bad for a German… That’s the bad.
The good is: Frankly on record the song-writing here does a quick stomp and boogie all over Airbourne’s debut. It’s like the second lot of party crashers brought the better beer (well they are German and I’ll take German Beer Purity laws over fucking Foster’s any day).
You’ll find zero surprises within Of Heroes And Enemies. Not a problem. Neither is the guitar melody in the fantastic ‘Deuce’ reminding me deeply of ‘Hells Bells’ or the vocal melody on the equally catchy title track reminding me of some classic bruising stomp from the NWOBHM because from the moment ‘Fire Your Guns’ barks out that high energy chorus if you like heads down metal boogie you’ll be too busy dancing to care.
Actually there are a couple of surprises I suppose. ‘Hero’ is weirdly mostly in the style of a classic European power ballad: A bit dirty round the edges but with one of those choruses that drips a little smaltz with the emotion (remember I mentioned Cinderella) but mostly gets away with it. And ‘Dusk To Dawn’ sounds like it was a guest vocal track on The Distillers ‘Coral Fang’ album with its aching, almost yearning vocals, which is actually a fine counterweight to ‘Hero’ to the benefit of both. If you’re going to do a love song, though, ‘Deuce’ with its superb vocal performance and arrangement of rough, shouted backing vocals and the consistently heavy and snotty guitar tone is the way to go every time. Alcohol stinking slice of awesome.
Full throttle stuff like ‘Ride With The Rockers’ have that heavy drum based stomping rhythm with the full on sore throat, unruly gang vocal back -up and if Blackbird have the stage charisma and energy that they do here on the album then, boy, are there going to be a lot of t-shirts to be wrung out and necks to massage in the morning.
It’s just one of those times when you just have to roll your eyes, check your analysis at the door and if the songs are this damned good then just rock with it. Originality is overrated. It’s only rock ‘n’ roll. And I like it.
(7.5/10 Gizmo)
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