Airbourne - Diamond Cuts album review

Good old rock’n’roll thunder from Down Under

Cover art for Airbourne - Diamond Cuts album

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Few bands pack as much fun and punch into their performances as Airbourne do. The Aussies attack their music with all the energy and attitude of maniacal cannibals on the trail of fresh flesh. It’s no wonder they’re regarded as the natural successors to Rose Tattoo.

This set houses the band’s first three albums, giving us another chance to bathe in the bloodlust of Runnin’ Wild (2007), No Guts, No Glory (2010) and Black Dog Barking (2013). They’re so full of in-yer-face attitude that they still kick hard.

What will interest Air heads, though, are the two other discs. The fourth CD, Diamond Cuts – The B-Sides, has a selection of 13 songs that were on the B-sides of various singles from that era, but also two previously unreleased tracks, namely Money and Heavyweight Lover.

Both have unmistakable Airbourne rock’n’roll pace, with the former being a real gem. Quite how this got recorded during the sessions for No Guts, No Glory and then discarded is something of a puzzle. This should have been put out a long time ago.

The fifth disc is a DVD called It’s All For Rock ’N’ Roll, which is a documentary on the band. If you’re expecting serious insight and philosophical analysis, you’ll be sorely disappointed. What you get is what you’d expect from such a band – full-on madcap bluster of the type that’ll make you smirk throughout.

This is a cracking reminder of Airbourne’s personality. The bonus stuff enhances it all.

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