Hold onto your strides. The Crisps are in the room, and rockin is their business, and business is good. Coming out swinging, plying their trade of out-and-out no-nonsense frills rock n roll garage punk n ‘ roll style, and we like it a lot. A bit of background to this here album is the band were formed in 2004 and did some demos. Stu Wilson from New Christs and Lime Spiders handles the drums and lead vocals, and he got Chris Nacard on Guitars and Graham Hood on bass, and began kicking up a shit storm with their vibrant psyched garage rock n roll, with the likes of the MC 5 driving the rolling riffs and wild drumming as ‘Dragged Down’ bleeds into ‘Square It Up’ before ‘Daddy Said’ whigs the fuck out with a super cool rhythm swinging like a good un hitting the right notes and scratching an itch for good time rock n roll played hard and loud.

To be fair, the songwriting is excellent, and no matter if it’s hard rockin’, wild n reckless or more measured grooves, it’s excellent. Wilson sure knows how to pen some top tunes. ‘Those Days Are Over’ has a familiar sound and feels like I’ve heard it before (which I haven’t ), but the subtle keys layer the sound whilst the band grooves like fuck with a rapid tempo. There’s some Slade in the vocal delivery and the foot-stomping tempo. To close off the first side, there’s an acoustic rocker with a hypnotic melody that is a real earworm. The acoustic guitar is peeled off as the song digs in, meandering towards its final knockings to round off a really impressive side of a record. ‘Gonna Make You’ is a killer tune, no question.

Side two is, well, more of the same quality rock n roll from ‘Scream’ to ‘Easy Come Easy Go’ that has a foot in the 60s on the breakdown, but the tempo reminds me of The Damned around ‘Strawberries’. No idea why; perhaps they share the same DNA.

There’s more of those 60s-inspired flavours on ‘Satellite’ as the band eases back slightly; it’s less full throttle and more of a pit stop with some great melodies and guitar work happening. The penultimate offering is a dreamy ‘Reset Switch’; the sound is more adventurous, which could be down to the band being different, bar Stu Wilson, who still writes the bulk of the songs but has co-credits with Michael Barnfield, who handles some Bass guitar on this side but writes three of the songs. It makes for an interesting flip on the record, but the quality remains hell; there’s even time for a psychedelic finale in the shape of the more pop-oriented ‘We Are Young’. Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Yet again, Heavy Medication delivers a really strong album and a most welcome addition to Australia’s roster of class acts.

Buy Here