Motorcycle Display Team are a modern Metal rock act who in the old days would have been based at Catford Speedway Track, where as a 10 year old kid, I was allowed to drive an RT bus at an event that also had a Motorcycle Display Team, that jumped through hoops of fire, over burning bales of hay, so a Motorcycle Display Team based in Catford are making me thinking about going to Catford in the late 70's and that old cinder track and the bus garage next door.
So climbing on The Yamaha's in this Motorcycle display Team are Steve Hinds, Morgan Condon Matthew Eyre and Drew Thompson, The album was tuned up by David Holmes aboard The Lightship 95.
The album opens with Hipshaker that has a late 80's early 90's dance rock feel to it, with I guess sampled vocals, giving way to heavy riffing guitars, whose silencers have been ripped off, hitting top gear as they get funky when the vocals come in, this is wonderfully schizophrenic with more ideas in one song than some bands manage in a whole album.
Footsteps is no relation at all to several famous songs of the same name, this is a sort of frantic and overly intense song, that rages like a rattling panhead, then starts asking questions, as they tip toe around the big questions, before bludgeoning you over the head with the answers.
Shut Up And Take Your Medicine sounds like it's being sung while looking for a way through the madness of modern US and Uk politics, our ever greater need of revolution as well as total electoral reform, but not expressed in that direct a way, this stops starts an stutters like starting a BSA on really cold mornings, as it weaves a way through the labyrinth of lies and distortions.
The Chain Links opens acoustically and gets rather funky as they try to put the links together as that busted chain leaks grease all over them, without ever mentioning the dreaded FM monument or Top Gear, as this comes across much more indebted to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers via Reef as this builds.
Scratch And Sniff goes all Kentucky Fried Movie on us, well not really, but this is more bass in your face on a hairpin turn at 60 mph, as they look at all the distractions that stop us from seeing the truth of what's going on, as they ask us to look beneath the surface gloss at what lies beneath.
Oi comes without any exclamation marks or snotty Gary Bushell quotes, this is a prog metal builder that goes all over the place, skidding on the snow and ice that keeps coming back to a stonking riff, as they ram home their point, you realize that tattoos are for ever, not just for Christmas, this has the catchiest chorus on the album.
Mexicans is all about the tragedy of the border policy between Mexico and the USA, the absurdity of that line, that that you can get killed for crossing, that some idiot thought needed a wall building on it, like a latter-day Hadrian. As they look at why it's so divisive, in these times of the gig economy, that's now falling apart at the seams, due to the problems the pandemic has made clear.
Armchair Politician takes careful aim at all those keyboard warriors trying to rule the world without leaving home, this has funky guitar with Radiohead style vocals mindlessly revving Kawasaki trail bike guitars raging against the drum beat thumping motor.
Divide tells us all we have to respond, we have a responsibility to try to make things better and not end up in endless petty arguments, while this goes all Muse meets Architects on us.
They close while Trying To Save The World With A Song it rips a new one for anyone who really thinks you can bring sanity back to our world, or change anything with something so mundane as a song, you have to act, so this is a call to revolution, are you with them or are you with The Woolwich, you'll have to listen to this to decide, while I wonder how well they'd have gone down at classic Catford Biker clubs or at the Old Tiger Head back when Catford had a big Biker rock scene.
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