Chicks, cars, sex, more sex – and sharks – Airbourne’s fifth album really does have all the good stuff. Deviating not a single inch from the AC/DC worshipping formula underpinning their career thus far, this is a barely controlled rock’n’roll smash and grab: loud, violent and bloody and about as subtle as a punch in the face – but in a really good way.
Produced by Dave Cobb (Rival Sons, Whiskey Myers) with an ear on the canny sonic values of AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock, amps hum threateningly and solos blast from the speakers at an unspeakably rabid volume – the furiously tight fretwork on Blood In The Water and Rock’N’Roll For Life is wonderfully bonkers.
If there is any kind of masterplan behind Sex To Go, She Gives Me Hell and Switchblade Angel, it’s to be the Ramones of heavy blues rock – short and snotty songs pared back to the basic essence of primal riff and chorus, with Joel O’Keeffe screaming like an Aussie Noddy Holder over the top. Boneheadedly terrific.
