Usually, bands load their best tracks on at the start of an album. Which is why so many fade away after the fourth or fifth track. But Leicester’s Skam have gone against convention by putting a lot of mediocre material into the first half of their second album.
It’s all competently dull. Songs which disappear from memory as soon as they, erm, disappear. But just as you’re ready to write off Peacemaker, it bursts into life with the groove grab of The Wire, and builds from there. Fortune Favours The Brave sparkles with a caustic riff, The Prince is close on being a modern day pop-rock masterpiece, and Let’s Get Rocked has a priapic vibe that belies the clichéd title.
Why didn’t Skam start with this lot and grab everyone’s attention? Who knows. But once they get going, this mix of The Temperance Movement and early Leppard really fires.
