The Disorder –  O.D.D. (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

I always maintain that one of the things that sets apart bands destined to remain a permanent  fixture of their local gig circuit and those who get out there and get the breaks, ones that are easily marketed to an eager audience is often the look, the vibe, the credibility of the bands image. If you hit the stage looking like you have just come from your job at the local hardware store or have dressed comfortably for a summer barbecue, then who is going to take you seriously? Turn up looking like O.D.D and the battle is halfway won. These three rock stalwarts look like they did their bit in the rock and roll wars, were the first over the top of the trenches to repeal electronic dance music, made daring night time raids to thwart the plans of evil indie kids with their skinny jeans and their complicated hair and probably display the heads of boy band members proudly in their hallways.

For that, we salute you. And thankfully the music that they make lives up to just such an image. Rock’n’Roll in the true spirit of the name before the ridiculous onslaught of sub-divisions, generic preciousness and tribalism hit the genre. It is groovesome biker rock, blues turned loud and nasty, hard riffing to a muscular beat and a pounding bass line, rock music boiled down to its essence, gimmick free and with no added sugar. It is surly and antagonistic, sure of itself and in your face…isn’t that how rock music is meant to be? All four songs on this EP occupy similar sonic space – driven, angry, four to the floor head bangers  – but that isn’t to say that they don’t all stand apart from each other, it is just that having found what it is they want to do, they have kept at it and been content with just doing it so much better than most of the other bands competing for the same audience.

Okay in the scheme of things it isn’t all that clever, I’m pretty sure that they never set out to split the musical atom or create the hard rock equivalent of a treatise from Descartes, but it is big, or as the aforementioned Frenchman might have put it “I rock therefore I am!” We might live in enlightened times but every now and again it is nice to be reminded that sometimes, sonically at least, size does matter.