Do you believe in rock'n'roll? Are you ready to testify? And can you laugh in the face of tinnitus? If so, you'll be delighted to learn that Brother John Robb and his mighty Gold Blade posse are back out of mothballs.
Robb, a musician and music journalist from Lancashire, has fronted several bands over the years but none more successfully - in both artistic and commercial senses - as the Blade. Arriving in the middle of the '90s as a fully conceptualised response to Yank interlopers such as Rocket From The Crypt, Gold Blade wore shiny suits and played soul-touched punk rock fast, loud and mean.
Inspired by Robb's love of heart-on-sleeve songwriting and guitar-wielding from Iggy and the MC5 to The Clash and Fugazi, the Gold Blade Gambinos made two albums for the now defunct Ultimate label and almost had a hit. And now, two years after their last record, they've been
resurrected once again, and in a world where fellow travellers like At The Drive-In can command magazine covers and devoted fans, there's every chance they'll crack it.
While the ranks of successful bands formed by music writers are depressingly thin (there's the Pet Shop Boys and, um, the Pet Shop Boys)(don't forget the Redskins -Reviews Ed), Robb might buck the trend for one simple reason. Everything he's done, from his groundbreaking if intermittently illegible Rox fanzine through the atonal noisescapes of The Membranes and every review and interview he's ever written, is driven by a passionate belief in punk's ethics and cathartic power. Gold Blade are an affirmation of a lifetime's love of no-nonsense rock, a ramshackle bunch who've foresworn drink and drugs to better focus their abilities and intent. They're also very well aware of how ridiculous they may appear, but they really don't care, and this may well be their masterstroke.
They are also, by some margin, the loudest band per cubic foot of venue on the planet. 'Strictly Hardcore' is still their proudest, air-punchingest, singalongest declamation, but now it can also presumably be heard several postal districts away. "What will you be at your very last breath," Brother John hollers rhetorically, "full of relief or full of regret?" Once you've experienced the Blade's onslaught in person, you'll be in no doubt. As Robb once wrote, of someone surely less deserving: excellently relentless.
IMAGES: DEBBIE SMYTH
