I am many excites!! This coming Friday, 2nd August, sees the official launch of the new album from Hawkes Bay’s most rockin’ export since my wife, Black Smoke Trigger. That’s the band. It wouldn’t suit my wife as a name. As we all know, these guys have been making massive waves in the music biz all over the world with tours and performances, air play and a general buzz that’s growing louder than Charlie‘s guitar solo as he dived (or is it dove, rhyming with cove?) off Auckland’s Sky Tower.

I’m giving a review here for their focus single, Phantom Pain. Like every other track Phantom Pain is an absolute blinder. Baldrick is in fine fettle, his vocal coming across at its grungiest (Cornell-style, I found), with a mid tempo, atmospheric orchestration adding weight to that. As ever though, I find this band sits far more in the Heavy Rock sphere than Grunge, giving me fond reminiscences of the likes of The Almighty, or The Cult a la 1990s post-Goth era.

We’ve got, as mentioned, a mid tempo number, with some moody rhythm guitars dropping in explosively, following a surprising opening with what sounds like Tibetan Singing Bowls (Awesome if it is!) underneath some plucked chords. Charlie‘s guitar layering is on point and imaginative, guiding the tracks lead tools nicely as Baldrick‘s increasingly impressive vocal gives us the info. Dan and Josh are flawless as a rhythm section team: their deep, thunderous pieces turning heavy into HEAVY.

The melody is always present in a BST song. These guys don’t scream, they don’t avoid an actual tune. This one is bittersweet and raw. Just as a heavy rock number should be at this tempo.

The You Tube vid has just been dropped too and it’s a well-shot sequence from one of their recent shows supporting Dickinson – AND IT’S IN WALES! Swansea Arena to be exact. I do hope the guys sampled the occasionally questionable, occasionally dangerous, always entertaining delights of Abertawe’s night life, primarily the legendary/notorious Wind (pronounced to rhyme with find, not binned) Street.

I’ll leave the studio credits as these are noted in other reviews I have posted about these guys’ releases. Suffice to say it’s sweetly balanced, allows for the band to flex individual muscle in their chosen tools of trade, and is consistent. Come on The Rock, where is the air play? One of our most high profile, successful exports – they just supported Bruce Dickinson FFS – and they will be going from strength to strength based on the quality of this album and the singles within.

Everybody with a penchant for Heavy Rock should know about Black Smoke Trigger. These guys are a credit to the genre and a credit to the quality of music pumping out of these shores. Ooo f***ing Rah!