Review: Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster [New Album - Songs @ Puregroove]
By lorbar on Jul 17, 2009 in Show Reviews
For those of you familiar with Brighton rockers Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, a new album will certainly come as something to be anticipated. Their London show at Puregroove Records show that I personally attended, showcased some of the new material, with the creative input, this time of new guitarist Tristan McLenahan, who left to join Nine Inch Nails. Some fans may be forgiven for being somewhat anxious of a whole new input, but they needn’t have worried.
Guy McKnight starts the show with new song “Monsieur Cutts”, screaming with an intensity less seen in the band’s earlier work. He has changed his look since “The Royal Society”, and is now sporting a Zappaesque beard and grey-dyed locks that gives him a look of a younger Nick Cave, no big surprise given the influence. “IT’S COLD OUTSIDE!” he screams wildly, running through the crowd, his wild eyes gazing past the nervous grins of the indie scenesters that seem to populate the North London record store.
The new material is interwined with old favourites such as “Mister Mental”, “Celebrate Your Mother” and of course, “In The Garden”. If the set does not have much of the old stuff though, it does not suffer because of it. The crowd lap up the new songs, “Never Be The Same”, “Love Turns To Hate” and “Mission From God”. he arrival of McLenehan has not stifled EMBD, nor has he massively changed their sound. What has changed with the new album, and maybe the new line-up is the increased moods of the songs, the maturity of the lyrics and the emotional intensity one can sense in the wild McKnight.
If one was enraptured by The Horrors, EMBD should really be a band worth seeing, and a band worth checking out if you haven’t before. With some bands, style comes before substance. With EMBD, the two are combined, and the new album is better than the first two. Everything has been improved, and thankfully, no concessions have been made. If you haven’t before, you’d do nothing wrong by checking out…
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Hey lorbar, cool show review. I moved this from “features” to “show reviews” since we have that category for them, this is just the first one we’ve actually had.
I added an extra paragraph break because it gets a bit difficult to read if you go for too many lines without one. I also made your url a link.
As far as the tags go, we pretty much try to stick with just artists names and year for the tags, otherwise they just get too out of control and it’s just a bunch of useless pages that gets created.
Marvin Marks | Jul 17, 2009 | Reply