Hell is not for heroes; hell is for Hell Is For Heroes.

Not that I wish this quintet any everlasting bad karma, it’s just that Hades FM sounds a lot like this album: xeroxed, a copy of a copy of a copy. The devil cannot create, only imitate, therefore the devil’s music sounds like the real thing, smells like the real thing, but suck on it a spell and you’ll detect that faint tang of brimstone jism, of something slightly off, like the apple Jeff Goldblum teleported between modules as a dry run for The Fly.

In other words, The Neon Handshake sounds like a record made of bits cherry-picked from the rock radio airwaves of the last ten years: some tried and tested Pumpkins bellyaching, a few attempts at the clenched angst of the mighty At The Drive-In, a slice or two of prime Soundgarden; all diced, spliced, nuked in the microwave and served up on a plastic plate, emanating fake heat, like something the night watchman at the Kerrang! channel fancied for a TV dinner, then went off at the last minute.

Bands like 3 Colours Red and The Wildhearts laboured at the coalface trying to flog this stuff to cloth ears five years ago, and to better effect. But then, timing is a hell of a thing. And hell is for the neither-here-nor-there, the tepid, the in-between.

In the words of John in Revelations:

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.”