Hawklords: Censored

Living in the shadow of the original band.

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Hawklords were a brief spurt at the end of the 70s; the remnants of Hawkwind going in a slightly different direction before dialling up the mothership and returning home. Now the name’s been revived, albeit with only Harvey Bainbridge from that first incarnation.

And Censored isn’t a disaster, but it also pales against 25 Years On, the 1978 debut.

The problem is that while the songs have a pleasant space-rock hue, they lack the unpredictability Robert Calvert in particular fashioned 37 years ago.

Things work best on the instrumental Soma, with a somnambulant grace, and the melodic rock sheen of Starstruck. Elsewhere, it sounds as if the band are trying too hard to prove worthy of the name./o:p

Malcolm Dome

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021