Label - Dark Riders / Pledge Music
Track listing:
01 - Knock You Out
02 - Stick It To The Man
03 - Balls
04 - Young Tongues
05 - Put Love In Its Place
06 - Raised By Wolves
07 - Trouble
08 - Teenage Knife Gang
09 - Creatures
10 - Sleepy Demon
11 - Cockfight (Pledge Music Exclusive)
12 - Kill Your Friends (Pledge Music Exclusive)
13 - Trust In Me (ITunes / Pledge Music Exclusive)
14 - Christmas Jumpers (Outtake - Pledge Music Exclusive)
The mighty Black Spiders return with their sophmore album and follow up to 2011's debut Sons Of The North in the form of This Savage Land. Recorded via the Pledge Music method enabling the band to to exercise complete control over the end product.
The album opens with the fist pumping Knock You Out, and moves quickly into the attitude drenched Stick It To The Man. Balls slows things down a little before Young Tongues and Put Love In Its Place resume proceedings. Raised By Wolves follows and to be honest in my opinion proved to be the albums most disappointing track. Trouble, Teenage Knife Gang and Creatures quickly follow and restore the albums quality levels to max. The album proper closes with Sleepy Demon, a real plodder of a track, in the traditional Prog Rock mould. A Great song.
Now we have the exclusives. Cockfight, Kill Your Friends and Trust In Me really should have made the album proper, they are all three every bit as good as anything else on there and in the case of Raised By Wolves far superior! To be honest, my favourite tracks are, Knock You Out, Balls, Stick It To The Man, Cockfight, Trust In Me, Kill Your Friends and Sleepy Demon!
Christmas Jumpers is just the guys fooling around and I'm guessing not a genuine outtake but rather enjoyable all the same.
On a Whole This Savage Land is a great album and worthy follow up to Sons Of The North.
Well worth checking out (especially if you can gut your hands on the exclusive tracks!
Rating - 9/10
