Seven Seals

It is official. Owl Cage (album Numero Oono) is a Kast-iron Klassic. I think I was thrown into a temporary insanity thinking it wasn't only by the lack of Jimmy The Pony, 3 Feet High and (pff) 27 Kilometers or whatever it's called... H slides into you like a Trouser Snake paying a visit to an Old Friend. It's a smooth and satisfying feeling. As ever it's Guitars You Can Sing Along To - De doo da doo... Murderous! What a chord progression. Proof, if proof were needed that the Metallers have all the best tunes - they just don't know what to do with 'em. Strip off all that silly hair shaking, Yankee Twang and affected distortion and what left with is Seven Seals playing MURDEROUS. Flattened 5th Paradise. Big D schizoid geetarz make way after seconds to reveal Pickers first Boognish impersonation on the album. "Boom, bum, de-da-goom!" It's also the first moment on the album you notice Mister Jimmy T's magickal bass playing - alternately pulling off and picking and tumping and farting in all the right places. And so the communcation continues to seeeeeeeeep from Small Broadcasts "Get Yer Mental Wealth In Order - There Goes God". Creepy as F**k and all the Sexier for it. Like being followed home by Doctor Death from Ye Olde Bluebelle - you know you're gonna get Bummed if he gets the courage up but Hell... it's flattering. It's my Live Favourite - I don't know what that says about me. Ahargh! The singalong Guitarz are back - The Glover and The Bingley are Riffing like Kiss still necking the Qualudes on Monday morning and course That Line "Something Grey on the Radar, Grey and Green On the Radar - GRAHAM GREEN ON THE RADAR!!" But then this snog is a showcase for Pickers ability to write lyrics that despite what they mean just Feel Good in yer Mouth and are Quotable As F**k. Sunglasses At Night or Murderama on the King's Throne? You might not have the Foggiest Tyne what they mean but you'll happily Shout them along with yer arm drunkenly sliding round the Person next to you. And here are one of Jay and John's finest moments of the album. The absolutely demented intro riff to Cake and exactly how guitars should sound. Burn those Clapton albums you pretend you don't own and invent a time machine to KILLKILLKILL Steve VaTriani before the evil he commints to record can inspire generations of Wiggly Eyebroyed Wankfests. Leave him slumped on the ground with This Riff sticking out of him, dance about and sing "BETTER THAN YOU, BETTER THAN YOU!" I always thought this song was about Marie Antoinette but I think that's nothing more than my own lazily retarded thought process seeing the word Cake and linking it to the Very First Thing that springs to mind. Cleo & the Drum is a belter of a tune - It's all late 80's Computer Music. Russky-tinged-gypsy-trilling-theme-Muzak for your Commadore 64 if it ever stopped showing that SYNTAX ERROR message actually f**king loaded that copy of Ghostbuster off that cassette tape. "A LETTER FROM YOU!" If you're not feverish with Seal-itis by this point then you are a cold carcass on the ground of a famous battlefield and even they wiggle their toes when your stealing their boots. As if they know this - those cunning foxlike Seals stick you with Seventh Wave next - Their Conquering Anthem - Some crazy cross between the Seventh Reich and 1984 which paints a future of the world Post Seals Mania - it's the song little kids'll be made to learn in school when all the Flags show Bingley's eyes and it'll be law to grow moustachios almost as big but in No Way Bigger than Pickers. Wondering where Bikini was? It was here All Along! Lyrical meisterwerk of cut-up stream of strop Psycho threats, that you can't help saying along; again Quotable as Hell - too many lines "Look where you're going/Make up your mind/Why not try Johannesburg?" Don't fancy that? You moron "Bric-a-brac!!!" "Why not try a crater like Mexico City?" "Get Her Kill Her Get Her Kill Her". Yar- does that mean we're Perverted Killers as well? O Well, if this is the soundtrack I'll put me Ma's favourite dress on and start carving up the bodies of dead Doxys now. The Rhythm Section are tighter than my Trousers here and if I've not mentioned Pounding Powney to this point - it's cos he's done his job remarkably. He is the reason you're dancing to all these songs like a 3 year old who's just discovered Wacko Jacko (that phrase just doesn't have the same meaning any more) but he doesn't detract from any of these beautiful odysseys by making you look at him. Which leaves it to The Wheel to escort us up that Escalator to the sky, you can see Pickers Heading The Ball and Lassie-ing It Up and Receiving Electric Shock Treatment to the jilted rhythms of this song. You laugh now but we'll all be doing those dances in the Indie Haircut100 Discotheque next week. "O No, My F**king Head" he admits before sliding off into Talking Hea-Ven - leaving the band to push us off an Escalator which has taken us thousands of miles up into air over the last 39 minures to hurtle towards the Earth. SMASH! Our bones shatter like vintage 78's and we're back. Back in a mundane world where the Seals aren't playing Music, something has definitely changed though - it isn't Them it's Us. The Kingpin