Tranquilizer is the second album by Imperial Wax, who originally featured the final line-up of The Fall, but in The Falls grand tradition this second album features a much altered line-up, that's now bolstered by some Black Pudding and Cabbage joining what remains of Pete Greenaway, Keiron Melling and Dave Spurr.
The album clatters out of the gate with Less I Need with distressed vocals claiming the Less I Need as a survival method to get through the 2020's, it's almost essential, as guitar raging garage rock does everything it can not to despair at the solid no frills pummel you to dust drumming.
No Control reworks Milton into a speedy angry rant, at the total loss of control many of us felt during the pandemic, the new reality it brought into view, as everyone's horizons shifted, generally not for the better, as they scream and wail both vocally and musically towards a climactic conclusion.
Burning In The Water are apparently our saviours remains, what has happened to them, well the twanging guitars have gaslit them into an abstruse tortured malaise like state, as the drummer rages all over the place, as the guitars try to keep up.
St Cavell is in praise of dear old Edith and all the good work she did, as super speedy western movie guitars fry our brains, as the world collapses around us.
Civilised Descent into the abyss is a perfectly normal scenario in the 2020's sadly, apocalyptic guitars clattering through the bass wall to fight it out with the drums as the vocals intone all the disaster-tinged thoughts, of those trying to crawl back out of the pits, trying not to get too obsessed by the bones of our dead.
Through My Hands has a slow expansive intro, with vocals using a nursery rhyme scansion to get the point across, at the regrets felt for all the loss of recent times. Until the bass breakdown and musical freakout.
The title track Tranquilizer certainly isn't tranquil and will be a wake-up call to anyone still trying to get to grips with the changed circumstances we all find ourselves in, as they are howling for some tranquillity to take away all the pain like an even darker sounding Black Spiders.
Midas Touch is being sought through the power of super charged rampaging guitars that don't let up, as they ram home just how much we need new ways of doing things and someone with the Midas Touch to help make it happen, or we will all be stuck in an endless loop of dread and self-deception.
Silence, he calls for Silence as he can't hear himself think, among all the amps set to 11, the overloaded speakers making his ears bleed, but if only those amps would stop buzzing then silence and peace might come his way. A return to the glory days of the 1990's might be possible, who would have thought that would now seem like a golden time as this is far noisier than the rather more famous song of the same name by The Beatles.
Post Lobotomy opens like they need to hear another block rocking beat, as they feel like they've been re-wired as the guitars twang at your synapses, don't give in, keep fighting for the better life you truly deserve, as you survey what's left of your memory since that Lobotomy.
The album closes with Under Wings takes them on one last crusade with the heavenly saints who might still be called on to help us all feel re-born in the post punk wastelands most of this album is set in.
Find out more at https://imperialwax.bandcamp.com/album/tranquilliser https://www.facebook.com/Imperialwaxband/
