Make no mistake about it folks, Boys With X-Ray Eyes are a user-unfriendly bunch of mentalists and this, their much anticipated follow-up to 07’s self-titled album is absolutely mental. From the furious opening to ‘Hotrod’, this is 25 minutes of sleazy South Wales metal designed to skull fuck you into oblivion, leaving little room for cuddling after. It’s huge.
That doesn’t mean it’s perfect though. There are points where vocalist Ben Morgan comes off as horribly generic, but on the whole, these are rare. In fact there are very few holes to pick in this record at all, and if you try, you end up end up stumbling over breakdowns to give Tiger Woods a run for his money and some seriously epic riffery. For an album as heavy as this, there’s surprisingly saccharine choruses in ‘Electro The Human Lightning Bolt’ and ‘Sickest Bar In Town‘ which allow room for breathing when necessary, and in less than half an hour it’s all over.
If like me, you consider the UK metal scene to be a sea of shit surrounding the occasional treasure island, you’ll find Boys With X-Ray Eyes are a lighthouse shining bright above all of it. This is seriously awesome stuff.