Rusty Logs?

Went to London today, to see the fantastic Museum Of Everything - 200 potential Fall LP covers in one building! If you want to go, you have 3 days left, but I highly recommend it. Walking from Oxford Circus to Marble Arch later, I realised that, though London is still one of the world's great cities, it has lost some of the sheen it had for me as a 16 year old. The entire commercial centre of London is just one vast High Street now, with the same shops - H&M, New Look - popping up every couple of minutes without fail. It was tragically a bit like walking through the backgrounds on Scooby Doo.

Furthermore, I realised that the word "nest" must have the same root as the verb "nestle", and that the gerund of said verb, "nestling", is presumably what a bird is between being a "hatchling" and a "fledgeling". And so it turns out to be, in avine circles. Incredible how words you've used all your life suddenly leap up with fresh meanings, isn't it?

But you don't want to read about any of that, you want to read about appalling provincial bands. Your wish is my command.


ASHES OF STEEL - DEMO


This sampler from Witney band Ashes Of Steel’s second album begins with the lines “It’s Saturday night and it’s party time/We’re gonna get drunk on cheap red wine”, from which evidence we conclude that the song was composed in about five minutes on Sunday morning. There’s nothing at all wrong with the performance, so long as a half-arsed growl is your idea of a great vocal, but the music itself is some of the most lumpen, insipid blues rock that’s ever crawled out of our stereo to lie panting in a corner. We almost feel sorry for it, and decide to put it out of its misery by battering it to death with some old 80s videos of Rock School and Hold Down A Chord.

Things pick up a touch in the second tune, the coincidentally named “Better Than That…”, as a little cheeky shimmy is injected into the rhythm, but sadly a few minutes later alleged live favourite “Rookie Rock” spoils the effect with the sludgiest Mogadon boogie-woogie the human mind can comfortably handle. Seriously, Ashes Of Steel are to proper impassioned blues what Barney the Dinosaur is to Mechagodzilla. Only the drummer shows the slightest hint of originality and emotion in his playing, and his head would probably explode if he stumbled across Sam Kelly at The Famous Monday Blues.

The only positive spin we can feasibly put on the recording is that we suspect a party band like this might find the live arena a more comfortable home than the recording studio, and if we were to see them at one of the popular, well attended gigs they assure us they play in Witney regularly, it might all make a modicum of sense. But on record, Ashes Of Steel is a deeply depressing proposition. I’m listening to this demo early on Wednesday afternoon. I know that Saturday night is a long way away, but with each passing bloody note that bottle of cheap red wine is looking ever more tempting…