City Saints – Go And Die CD (Spirit Of The Streets)
To keep the street rock\’n\’roll fire burning, Swedish band City Saints offer up this collection of out-of-press EPs and a couple of bonus tunes. Seeing as those singles were all very limited it\’s fair to say not many of you have all the tunes on here so for me this is basically a new 12 song album. On their previous album I enjoyed their oi-meets Chiswick records 77 punk sound and the songs on here are very much in that vein. There is perhaps a bigger rock\’n\’roll influence – think early Cock Sparrer, Rose Tattoo, a lil\’ bit of Chuck Berry guitars, shaken up with a bit of glam stomping and Sham 69 swagger. Although all of these ingredients have been heard time and time again, City Saints manage to bring things together in an original way. The songs have energy and power, and I can\’t get enough of that tried and tested rock\’n\’roll riffing matched up with City Saints\’ rasping melodic vocals that make even acoustic tracks sound hard and streetwise. If any of the above sounds like your thing then I urge you to check this album out as well as trying to catch them on a rare UK appearance this Summer in London with Evil Conduct. Tom Chapman