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Recorded at Walton Castle in Somerset and both released on the same day, Thunder has finally delivered the goods with their part 3 of 3 EP, The Joy Of Six, and their ninth studio album, Bang! The album consists of 12 tracks:
1. On The Radio – opens the album with a typical heavy Thunder riff and lyrics digging at the two-faced nature of the music business, talk about biting the hand that feeds...
2. Stormwater – is a Zep style (think Celebration Day) musing on Hurricane Katrina ploughing through New Orleans.
3. Carol Ann – is the morning after the night before when a guy wakes up after a one-night stand to find a woman’s number on the back of his hand, and he can’t remember what happened. “are you a babe, or do you look like a man?”
4. Retribution – is a languid, jazzy lament of lost love.
5. Candy Man – a classic Thunder stomp in the style of The Rolling Stones. Plenty of na-na-na’s and a sing-along-a-chorus. Fantastic guitar work by the boy Morley.
6. Have Mercy – a bluesy, banjo-led, slide-guitar number with a sprinkling of voodoo harmonica. This could be the new single from The Answer or some other contemporary southern-fried rock outfit.
7. Watching Over You – is a power ballad, could be Aerosmith or Bon Jovi.
8. Miracle Man – is a powerful rocking song with lyrics akin to Genesis’s Jesus He Knows Me, but way heavier. I can just see the fans singing along to this one.
9. Turn Left At California – the band go acoustic for this traveller’s tale. More banjo and harmonica. Quite why he’s heading for the borderline we never find out. This is probably the most ‘country’ track on the album.
10. Love Sucks – The first notes are pure Guns ‘n’ Roses, epic wailing Slash-style guitar work. It also features great harmonising vocals, a funky bass line, fantastic guitar work, and great keyboards from Ben Matthews. A stand out track.
11. One Bullet – is an acoustic rebuke of society’s spiralling apathy to gun crime and the general loss of innocence among our children, “Now he’s wrapping his fist ‘round a gun/And somebody dies”.
12. Honey – Back to classic Thunder hard rock for the closing track which is about chucking his woman out of his life, “So take your Prada and your Jimmy Choo’s/That warpaint that covers your lines/Dumb magazines, you can stick them all/Right where the sun never shines”. So, not bitter then?
Yes, there are shades of 1990 here but Thunder continue to evolve their sound and songs and once more prove to be at the forefront of classic British rock. I highly recommend buying this album.
9/10
