Chicken Diamond – My Name is Charles ‘Chicken’ Diamond (Beast Records)
CD
Out 14th of April
French one man blues band described as ‘Blunk’, ‘Raw Blues’ or ‘Alternative Blues’ steps up once more with new album ‘My Name is Charles ‘Chicken’ Diamond. Once more it seems like the sound of the demons of lost rock’n’roll and blues are just behind him. Louder Than War’s Adrian Bloxham has been listening.
Chicken Diamond is a one man primal blues band. As with his last album, all the sounds are synthesisers, drum machines or him on guitar… I’m still not convinced he’s not got the lost lords of Rock’n’Roll backing him, playing for their very souls. This monster has crawled from the swamps and is lumbering out into the world.
It’s a pure sound. Not like the old records that people say are the roots of what came next. But pure like, this is all I have to give and you can have it all. Chicken Diamond sings like he’s gargling illegal whiskey while chain smoking all the cigarettes he can get his hands on. He plays guitar like he’s trying to kill it. The music is as hard as nails. You get the idea that what you are listening to is exactly what Chicken Diamond is hearing in his head, God help us.
This is the bastard son of Blues; he is carrying on a long, long tradition of distorted, loud, gravel voiced lunacy. Think the Gun Club drinking with AC/DC until they both pass out in the gutter blood stained and covered in vomit. Think Captain Beefheart having a fistfight with Muddy Waters waist deep in a river as lightning forks overhead and thunder drowns out the world.
The songs are brilliant, mutant distorted, fuzzed out to hell and back and not meant for daylight. All stem from the blues but there are moments of Rock’n’Roll madness, Punk fury and Sexy Grooves. Right from the very first note you know this records going to kill.
So take down that bottle of cheap whiskey and a large glass, turn the lights out and let this rip through your world.
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Chicken Diamond’s website is here, he can also be found on Facebook.
All words by Adrian Bloxham. More work by Adrian on Louder Than War can be found here.
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