CD REVIEW: ROGUE MALE – HARD CASE

Shane | 4 May 2022 | Reply

CD REVIEW: ROGUE MALE – HARD CASE
RM2K MUSIC
2021
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
85%

It’s been a long time since Rogue Male burned brightly but all-too-briefly in the mid ‘80s and delivered two essential albums, First Visit and Animal Man. Frontman Jim Lyttle recruited Bernie Tormé, Robin Guy and John McCoy for a 2009 album Nail It, but it wasn’t until he reunited with original guitarist John Fraser-Binnie for the single Liar that the original Rogue Male sound was truly realised again.

Finally, Lyttle has released the fourth Rogue Male opus, and it’s as brutally perfect as those first two records were (No disrespect to Nail It – another very good record).

Prior to forming Rogue Male, Lyttle was in Northern Irish punk outfit Pretty Boy Floyd & The Gems (not to be confused with US hair metal band Pretty Boy Floyd), and his intention was always to “encapsulate every ideal that came with punk… it’s my statement declaring a total commitment in life-style and attitude.”

Attitude and punk fury abound here amid the rock and metal assault of Hard Case. Featuring tracks from various sessions over the years, Fraser-Binnie and Lyttle’s guitars shred flesh on their raw and raucous riffs, while rhythm section of bassist Kevin Collier and drummers Steve Kingsley or Danny Fury are rock hard, almost leading from the front as they assault their instruments. All four instruments wrestle for the listener’s attention, leaping from the speakers and throttling the eardrums in a glorious celebration of punk metal rock not heard since early Motorhead or the Anti Nowhere League’s harder-edged moments.

Mostly these are Lyttle’s songs – Short Sharp Shock, Take Over, Got It All, Fit To Drop and the previously released single Liar are all standouts, perfectly fusing punk and metal – as is usual with Rogue Male’s past output, plus two covers. First up is Chris Spedding’s Motorbikin’ which choogles along like a… well, like a horde of motorcycles roaring down a mountain pass. Next is an acid-soaked take on the 1958 Rawhide TV show theme tune (originally written by Ned Washington and Dimitri Tiomkin) which sounds like Johnny Cash… if Cash had been a founding member of Motorhead.

Hard Case is an extremely welcome addition to the Rogue Male canon, a wild and relentless album which leaves the listener feeling assaulted in the best possible way. Granted, most of these tracks are probably ‘outtakes’, but they are all good enough to have graced any other Rogue Male release. The bigger question is… will the glory of Hard Case be enough to get the band back into the studio to record an all-new fifth album? I bloody hope so.