ALBUM REVIEW: Dead Men Walking – Freedom – It Ain’t On The Rise (Eastersnow Recordings)
Dead Men Walking are an on-off punk ‘supergroup’ formed back in 2001 by Mike Peters of The Alarm and Kirk Brandon from Theatre Of Hate/Spear Of Destiny.
Members have come and gone in the intervening years, and the current stable line-up sees Brandon joined by John ‘Segs’ Jennings and Dave Ruffy from The Ruts/Ruts DC and Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers.
Stripped down
Their sporadic live shows, featuring stripped-down acoustic versions of some of the members’ finest moments with their ‘proper’ bands, are wonderful affairs indeed, and a handful have been released as hard-to-find live albums.
This is their debut studio album, and its 13 tracks follow the same format (without the live stories between the songs). But as well as some old (and newer) favourites, there are four brand new songs.
They’re a welcome sign that this is no cynical exercise in retreading the past, rather a band of friends who want to create something new, as well as celebrating their legacy.
Written by Brandon and Segs specifically for Dead Men Walking during last year’s lockdown, the new songs fit the aesthetic of the project and this album perfectly.
Restrictions
Restrictions meant Ruffy, Segs and Brandon recorded their parts at a studio in South London while Burns recorded his contributions at home in Chicago.
One of the new songs, Dorothy, gets us underway, and it’s a reminder that there are no fairytale endings in real life.
The brooding Man Down, sang by Brandon, sounds like a plaintive cry for help from a tortured soul, while the Segs-led Blame, whose lyrics give the album its name, is a catchy slice of 70s rock.
New material aside, each artist gets three songs, and all have chosen more recent works as well as classics from their respective back catalogues.
Thus from Ruts DC we get Kill The Pain, one of the highlights of excellent 2016 album Music Must Destroy, and, from the same record, Boy, their tribute to the late Malcolm Owen, which takes on added poignancy. The classic track is one of The Ruts’ very best, Staring At The Rude Boys, where Segs shows he’s grown into his role as vocalist by putting his own stamp on it.
Brandon gives us two SOD tracks; Never Take Me Alive from 1987’s Outland and The Price from 1988’s The Price You Pay, plus the lesser known Slave, from 2016’s TOH album Kinshi.
Burns’ choices are Guilty As Sin (sounding better than ever) and My Dark Places from Stiff Little Fingers’ most recent record, 2014’s No Going Back. Both have dark subject matter – abuse by the Catholic church and the black dog of depression, respectively, and here, stripped back from SLF’s all-guns-blazing approach, they become classic Irish folk songs.
Powerful message
Rounding things off is one of the best-loved songs in the SLF canon, Wasted Life (which Burns previously performed acoustically with 3 Men + Black), which is transformed from a slice of raging punk rock into a sorrowful lament, complete with harmonica, but conveys its anti-war message just as powerfully. Great stuff. 8/10.
- Dead Men Walking are taking the album on the road in a mini-tour from November 11-14 in Glasgow, Newcastle, Fleetwood and London. Tickets are available HERE.
