Some bands just grab you, you know. You might listen to Glasgow’s The Amazing Snakeheads’ recently released debut album Amphetamine Ballads and enjoy it but not be totally sure why.
If you asked people who were listening to Wu Lyf a year or two ago and asked why they liked their music they’d have been hard pushed to give an answer that weren’t just vague references to the personae that NME had created around them. Due credit though, they had a certain passion which brings me onto a certain Dale Barclay…
Passion is what frontman Barclay has in truckloads, the kind you can’t fake or put on for the cameras. He’s sure as hell riled up about something. Their live shows have become amazingly intense adrenaline fueled pageants that are so close to boiling over your brain is telling you you’re not safe there, but how the hell are you supposed to turn away from this spectacle?
There’s elements of hardcore (the raw instrumentation punctuated by repeated snarled lines) but Snakeheads see themselves as Rock & Roll, the purest kind- the kind you take intravenously. The brass is a surprise inclusion but just as menacing as the guitars, vocals and lyrics and adds another element to proceedings.
These guys could have been around in the 80s and be seen as an underground punk band in a time where they were ten a penny and besides, you already had the best in the game back then. These days, we need people like Dale Barclay to inject some passion into us, to awaken our fury, to check if we still bleed.
Here it comes again