Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
When you feel as if the entire universe has set you up for the fall, that the long-held belief of a golden trail of fortune in your life, then it is perhaps only the knowledge of what awaits on the Road To Disorder that can set you free from your chains. Those chains are only as rigid as you wish to make them, if you half-heartedly jangle them in a manner befitting the stroppy and the weak-willed, then they will hold fast; however, should you pull hard on the steel and bound fast iron, till the muscles ache and the mind is ready to explode, then the road to disorder is one to celebrate, for at least you are going there on your terms.
You don’t get to share a tour with Metallica or Airbourne unless you have some moxie, the nerve to show the world that the pathway you once struggled to get going upon, has become the motorway in which you will not pull over on, that the vehicles you leave behind are showing fatigue in their spluttering green faces, and you have the open road ahead. For I’ll Be Damned the Road To Disorder is one paved, not only with musical good intentions, but with the knowledge they have the ability to carry on past the ‘ere be monsters’ sign, stride with purpose and exhilarating panache through the obstacles of indifference, and meet the danger full on; only pausing once the job is done, only smiling at the success when they know they have beaten the long and distinctive odds.
In tracks such as The Entire Universe, the pounding Pigburner, Flag Follows The Money, Keep Warm Burn the Rich, A Hanging Job and Arrow of Time (Road To Disorder), the peering over the edge of the disharmony is always one that can induce the act of vertigo, a condition of malady in our lives; however, these tracks are cure for that turmoil that faintness of heart brings, they are the blinding therapy that installs into the listener that being damned is one thing, being heroic and carrying past others as they turn away from the salvation just out of reach, is quite another.
If they will be damned, then perhaps it is better that we follow suit, for at the end of disorder is serenity.
I’ll Be Damned release Road To Disorder is released on August 31st
Ian D. Hall