Tuesday, June 24, 2008

487. Scatterbrain / Here Comes Trouble. 1990. 4.5/5

The first logical question to come out of this review is the one I asked almost two decades ago – ‘where the hell did these guys come from?!’ Like just about everyone else in the world, I discovered Scatterbrain when their single “Don’t Call Me Dude” was played everywhere for a month back on its release, and the video was on every music program. The next step was, of course, to buy the album, and see what the rest of their songs were like.

The surprising aspect of it was that the album is terrific. Mixing their own unique style of metal, hard rock and funk together, Here Comes Trouble manages to appeal to all tastes and styles of music without allowing itself to be pigeonholed into one genre.

Taking out the excellent first single, this is still a mighty album – so original and uncompromising. Leading the way are “Here Comes Trouble”, “Earache My Eye”, “That’s That”, “I’m With Stupid”, the brilliant “Down With The Ship (Slight Return)”, which incorporates over a dozen of the best known riffs and drum fills of all time, “Mr Johnson and the Juice Crew” and “Drunken Milkman”. Each is just a brilliant tune, performed with skill and precision, and infused with the humour that makes this band a cut above others in their field.

This is a brilliant album out of left field, the kind of thing one could only hope to achieve with their debut release. The problem is to be able to follow it up and maintain the brilliance. That, as can be discovered, is a very difficult thing to do.

Rating: One out of the box. 4.5/5.

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