Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Where do you go when for the last few years you have had just the most incredible success and plaudits falling over themselves to place the band you are in as one of the most of the important of the first past of the 21st Century? Probably the only sane answer would be to tear it all down and rebuild again and that is exactly what Glenn Hughes and Jason Bonham have done with their new music offering California Breed and their debut self-titled album.
Ashes are there for a reason; they can be placed into an urn and looked at occasionally or scattered to the winds in the hope that where they land they become part of the fertile ground and reproduce like-minded bands with songs just as exceptional as what California Breed have managed in this recording.
There will be many no doubt that mourn the passing of the Jason Bonham’s and Glenn Hughes’ last ventures but with the addition of the sparkling Andrew Watt, this trio of musicians take their fans on a new adventure and in all honesty, grab a map, a marker to cross off the various staging posts and take plenty of money to buy petrol and drink along the way because it’s going to be a riot of a ride.
The legacy of outstanding music that both Glenn Hughes and Jason Bonham bring with them must have reached deep into the core of New Yorker Andrew Watt, the pulsating power of growling electric guitar and drums so loud and intricate that unknown tribes in the Amazon basin will pick up their ears and wonder how to reply to the screams of rock desire.
The determined, uncompromising sound delivered by all three men throughout the album will be one in which to relish, to feed off the energy as watt after watt courses through your body.
Tracks such as the bruising Chemical Rain, the delicious and destructive Midnight Oil, Days They Come and Scars are played with flexible and lithe feeling, whilst All Fall Down generates so much power that the National Grid is surely in talks with the band to ask if they can use them as a potential source.
Should you dig the new breed? Any other answer than a resounding yes is to be ignored. Buy it, play it, dig it.
Ian D. Hall