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Rating: PLAY LOUD! It's the only warning I feel like giving you for listening to this album. Maybe borrow the 300-watt JBL speakers from that hippie friend who thinks Brit pop is a new brand of snacks and wait for the rest of the family to go visit grandma in Little Red Riding Hood's forest. Move the Chinese vase and get ready to mosh in the living room, remembering to take off your shoes before jumping on the good sofa.
Because I've never seen so much live energy poured into a studio album. And who else could do it but an Aussie trio, tough people used to eating kangaroos and IGUANAS. Sure, saint Iggy always holds a place in the hearts of the Kiwis, possibly alongside the MC5's sonic terrorists of "Kick Out the Jams" and a ferocity in singing that would make Lemmy from Motörhead shrink.
In 1996 the Melbourne power trio released their second album on the momentum of the leading single "The Supernova That Never Quits." And it's an absolute devastation within the ten ear-splitting tracks that surprise you as if, at the bell of the first round, Mike Tyson immediately delivered a burst of hooks to the pit of your stomach just as a treat, continuing through all ten rounds playing cat and mouse to bring you to the end of the canonical three minutes of rock n' roll without putting you in a knockout right away. The album shocks you immediately with its sonic violence, but with listens, you can appreciate the beauty of ultrafast tracks like "Tea Minds," where you glimpse a certain psychedelic vein. The secret of the rock beast lies in the raw voice of bassist Tim Hemensley and the wild guitar riff of John Nolan in "I wasn't born yesterday." The myth of Detroit rises in the abrasive "One More War" and distinguishes the Powder Monkeys from other formidable aboriginal adorers like the Radio Birdman for the absolute sound wall raised by a rhythmic engine constantly running at full throttle. The initial duo "In the Doldrums" and "Insane Old Game" are two sonic Molotov cocktails always dropped with the same technique: short fuse with the brief drum intro and then the incendiary detonation for three and a half minutes of hell.
If Hemensley hadn't been cut down by an overdose in 2003, the Powder Monkeys would surely have been the last beasts of rock still around today.
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