(Crazy Love Records 2016)
Sailing Ratz
My Psychobillity
Trop Tard
Uptown Mouse
Revenge
Duct Tape Boogie
Terror Is Loose
Be My Baby Tonight
Channel Real TV
Riding
Where The Demons Go
Fukushima Surf
Wild Cavemen
Another début album has landed at Chez O'Prez causing a domino effect in that my nipples became so erect upon listening to it that they knocked over a line of cynical auld cunts claiming that psychobilly is dead in the water. My arse it is! We're only a few weeks in to 2016 and already the gauntlet has been thrown down by Canada's Lab Ratz. This thing will be a tough act to follow by their psychobilly cohorts. In days of yore when psychobilly was first adopted and adapted by our cousins across the pond it didn't really sound right. With the exception of The Quakes, it all sounded like tough rockabilly as opposed to having that very European twist which to my ears is the essence of psychobilly. After all, though a direct offshoot of rockabilly, it is not rockabilly, so fast rockabilly, psychobilly does not make. It needs that big dollop of European flavouring to make it pleasing to my ears. It needs aggression. It needs a mental rockabilly beat that does not sound like it's from the 1950s. It needs musicians that are beyond expert at their craft and a vocal styling that says "look at me again and I'll fuckin' kill ya". The Lab Ratz check all these boxes and then some. I'd heard of the band before in passing (possibly through my love of the Gutter Demons...Johnny Toxik plays guitar in this band too), but as with the complete and utter overkill of social media, my mental note to check them out kept going out of my head. So I didn't really know what to expect when I got this album. Psychobilly bands are either excellent or shite. There's no in between. The boys are the former. Even after I take me headphones off I can still hear em reverberating through me skull; a bit like after having the head blown off ya at a live show. This is straight-up 100% psychobilly of the highest order.
The O'Prez
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