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It would be a very sour puss not left drooling at the sonic stall set out on Dying, the opening track on the debut album from Alicante-bred blood brothers F Pascual (vocals/ guitar) and H Bardisa (vocals/drums).

Producer/label boss Liam Watson frames it beautifully – dazed, swooning chords driven to climactic delirium on a drum rampage, exploding like a methamphetamine-fuelled steam train.

The entrée doesn’t disappoint and, as former rock DJs, Cowboy Lovers make an interesting shift – their ‘samples’ result in visceral actualisation. Hence Slaves In The Darkness, a Grade A Hawkwind dystopian freak out but referencing heavy antecedents, is far from slavish.

Most thrilling is the physicality of Pascual and Bardisa’s musical bond, and the unrelenting incendiary intent at the heart of their impeccable fire and blood credo. A pedigree pair indeed./o:p

Late NME, Daily Mirror and Classic Rock writer Gavin Martin started writing about music in 1977 when he published his hand-written fanzine Alternative Ulster in Belfast. He moved to London in 1980 to become the NME’s Media Editor and features writer, where he interviewed the Sex Pistols, Joe Strummer, Pete Townshend, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Ian Dury, Killing Joke, Neil Young, REM, Sting, Marvin Gaye, Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, James Brown, Willie Nelson, Willie Dixon, Madonna and a host of others. He was also published in The Times, Guardian, Independent, Loaded, GQ and Uncut, he had pieces on Michael Jackson, Van Morrison and Frank Sinatra featured in The Faber Book Of Pop and Rock ’N’ Roll Is Here To Stay, and was the Daily Mirror’s regular music critic from 2001. He died in 2022.