Raging Speedhorn – Raging Speedhorn

Emerging from the tough Nottinghamshire town of Corby, Raging Speedhorn draw on the violence of their home town in this, their self-titled debut album. Six men from a decaying town where unemployment is rife, a spirit of anger and desolation pervades this album.

From the outset it’s clear this isn’t going to be an album to listen to with your parents, but it’s mercifully free of the pseudo-teen-angst of Slipknot et al. Rather than indulge in outrageous commercial bandwagon-jumping, Raging Speedhorn stick with their roots to bring us an old-school take on Nu-metal. It’s knives instead of guns, a very British feel, and at times it’s almost “Lock, Stock….” in its attitude to violence, twin vocalists John Loughlin and Frank Regan taking every opportunity to swear and scream. Second song “Redweed” sums up the tone for the album, “You’re just a fuckin’ lowlife/ You’re life’s a fuckin’ lie/ You live in your mind/ Screaming inside/ Screaming is fucking blind” a typical example of the lack of subtlety involved. Violence is the dominant theme here, titles like “Knives and Faces” and “Random Acts of Violence” showing the way.

Musically there’s a tendency to stick with the tried and tested. In your face stuff, decent riffs, well-structured songs, solid production, out and out guitar assault, quite a lot of depth, but lacking a spark. Interestingly the album’s described as “multi-feceted” on one website’s copy of the Metal Hammer album review, but it’s fairly good stuff, and there’s actually not a lot of shit here.

The songs tend to be growers, the punk-tinged blast of “Dungeon Whippet” making an immediate impact, other songs – even the single “Thumper” – taking longer to work into the mind. With only ten songs spread a bit thinly over 44 minutes, the album drags at times, and it’s a promising rather than essential debut. It’s an interesting idea to have the two vocalists, but they tend to tread on each other’s toes, and they sound quite similar, so it can be hard to know where one starts and the other finishes. They need to be a bit cleverer in the way they use this two-pronged attack, and then they might move on from being good to being great.

Raging Speedhorn have got the talent and a genuine sense of anger. Building a live following by the simple but effective strategy of playing live a lot, they could make it big, but they need to develop their ideas first. Promising, but not quite delivering.