Doncaster, UK-based “laprock’ trio Fast Lady apparently first formed in 2000 after “a night of mirth and mead uptown in Sheffield’, their 2003 debut album The Money Shot going on to be breathlessly described by Muzik as “the new, new, new wave of British heavy metal.’ Characteristic UK music press hyperbole aside, this double-A side 7” through V/VM Test certainly comes close to earning Fast Lady the aforementioned tag, with two new collaborations alongside the enigmatic Scorpio Scorpio, an Australian artist who’ apparently taken his “mayhem-themed ozrock electronica’ on several previous tours through Europe.
On the A-side of this 7”, “Love Dictator’ comes across similar to the missing link between fellow Sheffielders Fat Truckers and Tex Perkins’ long-forgotten electro-sludgerock Thug sideproject, with fat overdriven bass strings and jagged power-chords sliding along over a skeletal backing of metronomic drum machine beats, while all the remaining space gets filled with Fast Lady and Scorpio’s deliberately ocker sub-AC/DC lyrics (sample “I’ve got balls of steel / feel the power). It’s certainly full-blooded dick-in-hand stuff that works best after enough Jack-and-Cokes to stun a racehorse (as the sleeve art hints), with “United In Rock’ pushing the button marked “Bon Scott” as Scorpio’s yowling high notes collide with the trashcan drums and Slade-meets-Quiet Riot riffage (“stick your spotted dick / up your pommy white arse”). The musical equivalent of Ultimate Cage Fighting – and I mean that in a good way.
Chris Downton
