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What can one make of the Wildhearts? Their self-titled album's opening track, "Rooting for the Bad Guy," featured nearly nine minutes of thrash rock, as hard as anything Slipknot had ever done, but a melodic chorus and a guitar break in the middle were taken from the Slash book of how to play lead guitar. Ginger's throat surely must have been painful after screaming this set of songs, but that was his trademark: madness and mayhem. Every track sparkled with energy, "The Revolution Will Be Televised" sounding not unlike the Clash's "I Fought the Law," but a heavy guitar riff running through it marked this as a Wildhearts classic, and "Slaughtered Authors" was another eight-minute epic, giving the song time to build through several different themes, while the final track, "Destroy All Monsters," had a Metallica-style riff and three false endings before it finally came to a crashing halt. The Wildhearts marked the reunion of guitarist CJ (Chris Jaghdar) and drummer Ritch Battersby for the first time since the mid-'90s, and this was also the first album on which the band was joined by American bass player Scott Sorry, formerly of the U.S. punk band Amen and rockers Brides of Destruction. Not an album to appeal to the mainstream, but the fans who had stuck with the band since the early '90s would find plenty to excite them. ~ Sharon Mawer
