The Scaramanga Six - ‘Cabin Fever’ (Wrath Records) Released 26/09/05

So adept is their treading of the line between pomp and pomposity, it would not surprise Gigwise one bit if The Brothers Morricone had been tightrope walkers in a circus before upping sticks to Huddersfield to form the terrifying Scaramanga Six.  They weren’t (Paul was, and still is, a TV director), but the fact that their songs betray a sense of drama less subtle than David Copperfield whilst still staying on the right side of, say, Muse, is nonetheless a pretty good trick.

Despite being down to a four-piece, ‘Cabin Fever’ is by far The Scaramanga Six’s loudest and toughest-sounding album.  Opener ‘Soul Destroyer’ casts the band as the crew of a doomed galleon, forever sailing against the wind, and is as dynamic as anything testosterone-oozing rockers Iron Maiden might have bludgeoned our ears with back in their day.  The backs-to-the-wall sentiment bleeds over into ‘Smite My Face!’, though tempered with a touch of self-deprecation ("Illusions of grandeur/Ideas above my station/Destined for failure/I carry on").  Elsewhere, the sound is a mixture of Pink Floyd operatics (‘Pincers’, the second half of ‘Poison Fang’), British punk and new wave (‘The Poison Pen’ has THE organ sound from which The Stranglers forged a career) and 80s US garage (‘We Rode The Storm’ had Gigwise digging out it’s old Fuzztones records).  Yet despite the nods to their musical upbringing, every song sounds like it could only have been written by the Morricones, and in ex-Cardiacs Tim Smith they have a producer capable of bringing out the beast in this gang of freaky bastards.

Lyrically, ‘Cabin Fever’ is a very English affair; it’s a bit like what Kaiser Chiefs might have sounded like if they’d been into The Wildhearts rather than Blur. ‘The Electricity, Bill’ is basically an eviction notice to a nightmare housemate, while ‘Horrible Face’ comes across as a blacker, blunter version of The Chief’s ‘Everyday I Love You Less And Less’ ("Where did you get that face?/You ugly, ugly cow"). Occasionally the direct lyrical approach is a little artless, as on the B-movie horror jazz of ‘Unclean’ (coincidentally the weakest track on the album): "Love is ****ed up/I’ve run out of luck/just like someone whose been struck/by lightening 17 times".  What happened, lads - did you run out of words ending in –uck?  More often than not though, the results are hilarious, and let’s face it, we weren’t exactly expecting Bob Dylan here where we?  ‘Cabin Fever’ makes you laugh, stroke your imaginary goatee, dance like a frog on E and shit your pants in one hearing.  Name one Dylan album that does that.