Living Colour are the world’s longest-serving black-rock practitioners next to George Clinton’s Funkadelic. Their sixth album in 30 years and the follow-up to 2009’s The Chair In The Doorway, Shade sees guitarist Vernon Reid, singer Corey Glover, bassist Doug Wimbish and drummer Will Calhoun giving the blues a much-needed anger-driven 21st-century makeover after claiming to have been possessed by Robert Johnson’s spirit during a transcendental blast through his Preachin’ Blues at Harlem club the Apollo.
The band spent five years harnessing their newly inspired blues-metal visions with producer Andre Betts, forging incandescent juggernauts such as Freedom Of Expression (F.O.X.), softwareuiphraseguid=“887be30a-a13d-462e-b838-de80c4891292”>Blak Out, Two Sides (featuring a Clinton cameo) and Invisible (homaging late Band Of Gypsys mentor Buddy Miles), plus incendiary covers of Notorious B.I.G.’s Who Shot Ya?, Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues and, naturally, Preachin’ Blues.
This white-hot furnace of a black-rock milestone shows Living Colour more scathingly relevant (and desperately needed) than ever.
