We’re currently counting down the best tracks of the year, all the way up to New Year’s Eve. One rule: only one track is featured per artist. Today, we examine numbers 70-61.
70: UFO – _The Killing Kind _
It’s 70s-style UFO filtered through a contemporary strut. This is blessed with the armoury of a strolling guitar sound and a compulsive rhythm. The band make it all flow so easily.
69: Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats – Pusher Man
That grinding riff – close your eyes and it could almost be 1970. If Sabbath really have breathed their last then this lot are surely first in line should we require psychic replacements.
68: Well Hung Heart – _Throw it all Away _
Fabulous piece of heavy, catchy pop rock from this husband and wife team. Expect groovy guitar meat from Robin Davey (of blues-rockers The Hoax) and Greta Valenti packing No Doubt-esque panache on vocals.
67: Scott Weiland & The Wildabouts – Way She Moves
Much has been made, quite rightly, of Weiland’s recent passing and tragic (not-so-recent) demise. But let’s not forget what great music he still produced in his last months.
66: Legendary Shack Shakers – Mud
A rootin’ tootin’ Southern gothic knees-up, from the finest rockabilly/swamp blues brigade in all of Kentucky. Yee-haw.
65: Slayer – Repentless
The title track of Slayer’s eleventh album pays fitting tribute to their late guitarist Jeff Hanneman with a sense-battering prison riot of machine-gun percussion and skin-flaying speedthrash solos. Vintage Slayer.
64: The Wanton Bishops – _Time To Go _
Not actual men of the church by any stretch, this Lebanese duo have killer ears for bluesy garage rock – epitomised in this raw dose of Beirut-meets-the blues passion.
63: Walter Trout – _Almost Gone _
Channelling the bluesman’s wretched wait for a donor liver in 2014, you can feel Trout raging against his dying light, with an eerie guitar riff and mouth-harp that blew through your speakers like a locomotive.
62: Marvel – L.O.V.E. Machine
‘Wait, isn’t that W.A.S.P?’ Hell yeah it’s W.A.S.P – covered by a gloriously enthused group of Swedes. They love 80s metal, and “felt it was natural to have the second single come in the shape of a sawblade in the crotch!” Eek…
61: Kadavar – The Old Man
Deliciously fuzzy, psychedelic stoner rock from the Berlin trio, The Old Man marries nostalgic haziness with pleasingly urgent oomph.
