Given that his last album with ATV landed 14 years ago, it looked like Mark Perry – punk provocateur and founder of quintessential fanzine Sniffin’ Glue – may have been lost for the duration.
Thankfully though, he’s back, heading up a five-piece band for an album that feels like it could’ve been made at any time between now and 1976. Angry guitars snap and kick, the drums sound like they were recorded in a box under the stairs and Perry’s voice still carries an insolent sneer.
With tunes about basement sex, schizophrenia and the vastness of the cosmos, Opposing Forces is nothing if not eclectic. Hello New York and French Girls find ATV at their brusque best, no-nonsense and direct.
At other times, the self-indulgence that blighted some of Perry’s 80s work bleeds through, especially the monotonous The Visitor and, despite its evil Stooges bassline, the spoken-word narrative of Stars./o:p
