I’ve been on tenterhooks for the chance to review a Just One Fix track since I started this site and I knew Riccardo and the guys were recording some new work. They have not disappointed with this track, Gods & Devils, which I am unashamedly going to crow about getting to hear now while you good folks won’t hear it until release day, which is 19th January next year (2024).

Gods & Devils is serious and class. Thrash – that age-old term for very high tempo, loud, deep, heavy, HEAVY metal, is one of my secret loves. Just One Fix are purveyors extraordinaire of this family of music.

The song is from Dave Rhodes Productions recording wizardry, and I get the energy, fury and earnest appeal that one got from the first time one heard Metallica‘s original release Kill ‘Em All. Some bone-jarring drums and basslines take us way down into the bowels of wherever they came up with this one from. Rhythm guitars are toned well and beefy, and the lead is wailing and waspish.

Atop this Riccardo Ball delivers a Tom Araya meets Hetfield vocal apocalypse, with some Serj Tankian outrage in there too. The man can growl, he can snarl, he can sing too, and you feel the presence of a genuine front-man as you get into this song. And this song will get you.

A bleak melody, great orchestration and well-timed, deliberately jarring breaks in rhythm keep this song motoring furiously. Riccardo says it’s aimed at capturing the feel of the words of French philosopher Denis Diderot when he said “Man will never truly be free until the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last priest“. This song rails against monarchy and church. It’s not worshipping any red-skinned fellas with horns and forked tails, before you say anything! It’s just something for the libertarian anarchists and the socialists to listen to and realise you ain’t that different in your desires when you think about it, are you!

With this genre, this song will go well live. In clubs, festivals, anywhere – this is a well-seasoned and celebrated band that delivers the goods on record as well as on stage. Just One Fix is New Zealand Heavy Metal royalty, and when they deliver songs like Gods & Devils it’s easy to appreciate why.

Lemmy is nodding approvingly through a cloud of Marlboro smoke. Oo-f***ing rah! Peerless.