The Inca Babies are back with the bands 9th album, dark and deep as ever, Harry Stafford and the Inca Babies take us on a journey back to their Hulme roots and forwards to how that dream has become nightmare. Harry's Inca Babies this time round are Rob Haynes, Jim Adama and Kevin G. Davy and as ever produced by Simon Ding Archer at 6db Studios in Salford and mastered by Marco Butcher at Boombox Studios in North Carolina.
The album opens with Ghost Mechanic 9 that sounds like some east end gang, ready to rumble with spanners in hand, dark twisted gothic blues are dripping with gasoline, pipes need tightening, stop those fluids dripping causing problems, propulsive drive shaft drumming, tyres need balancing, this machine is veering left off the road, if you don't pull that steering wheel right, will the brakes work to get you pulled up at that stop sign, howling noises like the tyres are catching on the wheel arch on that turn.
Insect Symphony comes crawling out of your speakers like spiders advancing across the table towards you, cramped intensity of Kafkian metamorphosed Human flies, clucking for those ever-addictive French fries, buzzing amps driven riffs driving the air from your lungs.
Augustus Tympan and his plan tamper with your membranes, setting them on fire, wanting to see the whole town burn, like some Southern Californian pyromaniac out of control, ready to get fired at the stake of these preacher blues. The dread comes knock, knock, knocking at your door.
I'm Staying Put no matter what those triumphal heralds blast out, they are deep within the concrete box. stuck in a Lancastrian nightmare of brutalist majestic insanity. Are the cockroaches taking over again.
The Exhaust Of Broken Dreams has used all the drugs, losing the vision to a better world, stuck within the shaken blasted reality of slums, deep twangs driven over the organ riff, can this fight ever be ended, looking down into the abyss.
Spacewalk is a gothabilly anthem to the greed and madness of those wanting another Spacewalk, no they are not in love with Elon's vision, the sort of Spacewalk these guys go on is normally fuelled by pills and powders, rather than huge, monumental ego's, Johnny Kidd is nodding in appreciation once more.
Mercury Is Down is distressed, dark hued desperation for the fading light, of those shivering in the freezing wastes, gentrification passed them by, can there be any escape before spring, ever jangling guitars driving the point home.
Deck has Harry holding on tight as the ship goes down, like the world is on fire and everything we thought was safe falls to pieces, shards of guitar blast at our brains, like saviours to cut through the wreckage of 21st century nightmares, can they do something to right the ship once more, or are we condemned to the briny deep.
Opium Dub works with my current codeine script rather well, re-working the bands imperious anthem Opium Den into a dark gothic swirl of dubbed drums echoing through time, the mercenary sounds of the deep stupor your in, sitting in that Opium Den unable to move, floating, nodding barely pulsing, slower than the bassline, drums reverberate around the walls crawling through the miasma again.
The album closes with bonus song Monster In The Deep a slow dark gothic cartoon theme tune, for the bleak adventures of those fighting against the monsters of our time, a losing battle it seems, twisting those guitar notes and hear them scream in agony, go on escape the Kraken, its every man woman and child for themselves.
Find out more at https://incababies1.bandcamp.com/album/ghost-mechanic-nine https://www.facebook.com/incababies
