Russell HughesFire Red Empress – Black Morphine (Polarian Records)
Genre: Hard Rock
With high praise from Metal Hammer and Classic Rock, Fire Red Empress had a certain set of standards to live up to on their debut album.
With the former describing them as ‘so groovy you’ll shake your pants off’ and the latter screeching that the group sound like ‘all your favourite bands beating each other to death’. No pressure then.
As all beasty rock albums should do, Fire Red Empress skip straight past foreplay and head for the main event as quickly as possible. Black Morphine isn’t hear to mess about getting to know you, it just wants your pants down and by the time Jennifer Diehl has finished with her blistering chorus on Half Bird Half Man you know you’re in for a good time.
Even Under The Barren Light with it’s false pretenses as a slow ballad contains an irrepressible groove underneath Diehl’s perfect rock Godess voice, while Hail The Face is a Halestorm type Venus Fly Trap of a tune that entices in its victim before trapping it forever.
The title track from the album is like a shot in the arm. It’s 50cc of pure rock n roll straight into a main vein with thunderous guitar, a instantly catchy chorus and top notch vocals from Diehl. The whole song builds and flows with an aggressive energy that’s difficult to contain.
Although there is proof within the record that Fire Red Empress can turn it down a notch when they want to, especially with The Little Death – but wjhen your loud is as good as there’s why would you want to?
To see a band like this come through is incredibly exciting and shows the regeneration of the genre is well and truly on track.