FASTWAY – ‘Eat Dog Eat’ (SPV)
I approached this album having got hold of the wrong end of several sticks. Firstly, I’d assumed the title was ‘Dog Eat Dog’ rather than the less familiar ‘Eat Dog Eat’. And secondly, as it comes with the second-worse artwork of 2011 – Gnô’s ‘Cannibal Tango’ still grimly holding on to that unfortunate accolade – I’d assumed that the CD itself would be, well, a dog. But you shouldn’t judge a book – or indeed a CD – by its cover, and ‘Eat Dog Eat’ is certainly more pitbull than poodle.
Fastway is of course the brainchild of Fast Eddie Clarke who, after quitting Motörhead after the ‘Iron Fist’ fiasco, teamed up with the similarly adrift Pete Way to form the eponymous band. Although Way jumped ship fairly early on to found the equally well-monikered Waysted Fastway’s self-titled debut album caused quite a few ripples on its release in 1983 and charted both here and in America. That was as good as it got though – in commercial terms at least – and the band never ventured into the studio again after 1990’s ‘Bad Bad Girls’.
Until now, that is. Revitalised by a partnership between Clarke and Toby Jepson (once just a Little Angel, now seemingly an all-encompassing force in rock/metal circles) Fastway are all fired up once more. The band’s first studio release in 21 years is more than just a worthy successor to their early triumphs: it bares its teeth to show that there is plenty of life in the old dog yet.
The ace-up-the-sleeve appears to be Jepson, who not only handles vocals, bass and acoustic guitars on the album but also produced it: and a fabulous job he’s done too. Kicking things off with ‘Deliver Me’, a mid-tempo head-shaker with no great attributes, is probably the album’s only real flaw. After that everything gears up considerably with the likes of ‘Fade Out’, ‘Sick As A Dog’, ‘Dead And Gone’ and ‘Leave The Light On’ all nudging the upper end of the Richter Scale with a healthy tremor of good ol’ fashioned hard rock as English as fish and chips and rainy bank holidays. A point of reference might be prime-time Skin, although there are as many different styles across ‘Eat Dog Eat’ as there are puppies in a pet shop. A welcome return from a veritable British institution.
© John Tucker November 2011