Albums: Massive Wagons - Earth To Grace

Massive Wagons - Earth To Grace

Sleep Forever; Missing on TV; Free and Easy; Night Skies; The Good Die Young; All We Got; Cool Like A Fox; Fun While It Lasted; Whatever Makes You Happy; Underdog; Rabbit Hole.
(Earache Records)

Lancashire rock band Massive Wagons return with what is probably their best album to date. Now fully focused, in command, and with a strong set of songs, the bigger stages await them.

Although this is their seventh album, you could be forgiven for assuming that this was a strong debut coming as it does with an energetic punch that has some very leading shots.

Sleep Forever, a stomping rock number with a guitar riff reminiscent of Motörhead, opens the album. Massive Wagons has sounded this hard previously; the difference here is that there is an actual melodic tune underneath the heavy armoury. A great opener and sure to become a live favourite.

Massive on TV follows, again with the melody content turned up to ten, and the band sound like true contenders with a lyric about distrust with the government.

Frontman Barry Mills sings that he is “not wishing he was back in the USA, because I come from Morecambe, where the skies are grey,” on Free and Easy, where the promise the fans have entrusted in the band appears to be delivered in style as the Lancashire seaside town gets a name check in the process.

The mood takes a deeper path on Night Skies, coming as it does with a Def Leppard-style guitar riff and a lyric about depression as Mills sings that he “struggles to find a smile that fits his life” as Massive Wagons portray a different side to the band on a track that many of their fans will be able to relate to.

The Good Die Young features Hundred Reasons’ Colin Doran, where the track strengths with an American sheen; closer to home, the video for the song was shot at the Ashton Memorial in Lancaster.

With the album ending where it began with another rock stormer in the shape of Rabbit Hole, the overall feel of the album is of a band on the verge of bigger things as the wheels on this particular wagon continue to go round and round—albeit at full speed.