Bat – Under The Crooked Claw (Nuclear Blast)
Ryan Waste and Nick Poulos are busy fellas, thanks to their day jobs with Virginia’s most celebrated crossover thrash revivalists. However, they’ve still managed to take time out from Municipal Waste to visit the bat cave… and knock out another album of feral Motörpunk and NWOBHM worship.
Yes, it’s taken them eight years to release the follow-up to Bat’s debut full-length Wings In Chains, with only 2019’s excellent Axestasy EP for fans to suck on.
But all good things come to those who wait.
And Bat have bitten deep with this surging, snappy opus that reeks of grimy basement shows, spilled beer, leather and sweat. Pit anthems are plentiful and that white line fever is infectious.
Bassist/vocalist Waste calls the band’s sound ‘primitive heavy speed’, and it’s a pretty apt for label for songs like Vampyre Lore and Rite For Exorcism, which revel in proto-thrash riffery and comic book horror.
You’ll get jacked up Streetbanger’s back alley amphetamines. You’ll get tanked up to the gnarly 80s punk metal of Warshock. And you’ll have one hell of a lot of fun. Just don’t expect your vertebrae to be the same after it.
Original this album ain’t, but it’s far from one dimensional. There are echoes of Kill ‘Em All, Killers and Killed By Death, and Bat keep this record exciting and invigorating, right to the finish. Indeed, closer Final Strike feeds on NWOBHM heroes like Satan and of course, Maiden… Poulos even morphs into Adrian Smith for a few dazzling seconds.
Time for a battering
Under The Crooked Claw smells like it’s been dipped in Lemmy’s Jack Daniels and then fried by a lightning bolt.
In other words, it’s everything that rock ‘n’ roll should be about.
Side project? Bat deserves to be so much more.