Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love ReactionWe Are Volsung Review

Years ago, my friend and I bought tickets to a Zodiac Mindwarp gig that was taking place the following night. They were numbered five and six, so we, somewhat downcast, waited for the cancellation announcement. But it never came.

The venue was full, although the band – think a British biker Spinal Tap after a head-on collision with a comic book store – hadn’t released a single in half a decade, and their big hit Prime Mover was nothing but a memory. Maybe it was the wetsuit-tight leather kecks Zodiac (né Mark Manning) was fond of wearing, or the lyrics that could make a madam blush, that helped draw the punters in. Whatever, the sleazy, witty dirt-rock, which once led Mötley Crüe to proclaim ZMALR their favourite band, still clearly had the power to refresh the parts that other groups couldn’t reach.

Judging by We Are Volsung, their first album since signing to respected metal label SPV, not too much (bar the bassist and drummer) has changed. Guitarist Cobalt Stargazer’s riffs crunch, as ever, like bones under Judge Dredd’s boots, Manning is all come-on drawls and snarling menace and they’re not afraid of the odd melody. White Trash and Don’t Touch My Guitar, with its whiff of The Cramps, could have come out at any point since the band’s 1985 inception, while Die Pretty recalls Alice Cooper (whose single, Feed My Frankenstein, was co-written by Manning). However, Mindwarp are now heavier, kicking as much ass as their hard-rockin’ peers who don’t know one end of a self-mocking shtick from the other.

The highlight, closer Kill a Mockingbird, is dark, weighty and lumbering; it’s also, surprisingly, more drenched in blues than a Deep South porch. But We Are Volsing is ostensibly pronged helmet rather than metal-studded fedora (although the Viking theme seems to have been abandoned halfway through. I don’t remember a Lucille ever appearing in a Norse saga). Opener Stark Von Oben and the title-track, particularly, are tooled-up, steel-tipped battle songs. Where once a lyric like "My spear never misses" would refer to something in Manning’s pants, here it assuredly does not (unless he’s started to wear five-foot long boxers). The whole concept is probably tongue-in-cheek, yet it apes those dodgy Odin-obsessed Scandinavian bands so well it’s disconcerting.

But ZMALR didn’t win fans through such sophisticated parody – we loved them for their seedy humour, their blatant, jokey crudeness. Very little of which, unfortunately, appears on this album. Please, next time, let a spear not just be a spear.