It was late at night; I was exhausted from wrestling the damn Camaro on ice slicked roads General Motors seemed to have forgotten when designing the slick convertible, although I suspect I did look hot bouncing off the curbs with a panicked expression on my face. My shoulder had more multicolored bruises than a Russian infantryman at the Battle of Stalingrad from the fooking flu shot that wasn’t supposed to hurt. I’d offed the third roboRepublican phone caller screaming that the way to end the debt problem caused by massive Republican spending and tax cuts for the rich was to get rid of Obama and the cat was screaming for food. The blond I’d been trying to avoid was sending texts and the home team was looking at a beating this weekend that would make the Battle of the Little Big Horne look like a Yankee draw. Stop the fooking madness, bring me clarity and bit of sanity. Drugs are expensive and the liquor stores close early around this Bible Belt outpost in the otherwise booze soaked Midwest. What’s a brother to do, ain’a?

Well, I do have a review to write but I’m not sure Gothic is going to take the edge off. What I need is something more along the lines of the Colombian red that brought focus to the Children of the Sun back in the day on the beaches of South Florida where reality was just a toke away and came with the pounding sounds of screeching metal. A couple nearly naked female sun worshipers wouldn’t hurt either, but, in this weather, that’s asking a little too much of the celestial commandants’ who run this show from on high, unfortunate as that reality may be. But, in a moment of psychological optimism, I located the Lilygun files on iTunes and let ‘er rip. And, it didn’t take long. Shit, howdy and fall back in it. A pounding drum, a screeching guitar after the fashion of the old days and a vocal that could have been Pat Benatar pissed off and bitchin’ with better lines. Well, after about 15 minutes of this "cure for the psychosis of life" I got to wondering, what’s a bestial sound like this look like, can’t be as good as it sounds, can it? So, I took a foray into the ecclesiastical netherlands of YouTube and, hot damn, she IS as hot as she sounds. Well, the shoulder is feeling better, I disconnected the phone and, wonder of wonders, I found a half full bottle of Puerto Rican Rum, things are looking up. Ain’t nothin’ like a lady metaler with a guitar. Let’s take a closer look at this thing.

So, I says to myself, "Self, take a quick peak at the supporting material the lady sent with the promo and see what she has to say for herself, might be interesting." Well, I never argue with myself so I head for the documentation and give it a read. She goes by the name Anna-Christina, a Britt. And one with an interesting history. Seems the lady had an unfortunate encounter with a Subarachnoid Brain Haemorrhage in 2005 that nearly had her singing second lead soprano with the Heavenly Choir. But, she beat it and proved sufficiently self-motivated to return to the metal scene, and with a vengeance. She put together a band that went through various personnel changes but evolved into a regular on the London metal scene and, eventually, they got around to producing the material under review here.

And that material tends towards a somewhat different interpretation of the current trend in Femme Metal, although one most of us would have little difficulty appreciating. They call it a "guitar based rock band" and that’s pretty accurate. This material flows more in the tradition of some of the 90s material, Metallica, for instance, only with the more interesting lead. But the stuff howls, guitars provide a wall of sound here, a light dusting there. We use the production folks to take the vocals into choral like sounds and the drums pound out a throbbing base line over which the rest of the material rides.

The first track, Sunlight Dreams sets the rock to rollin’. It’s a headbanger and pretty much sets the tone for the CD. Unfortunately, most of their videos are like this, not of the highest quality but they do tend to capture the fact that this is a "live" act, probably more than anything else. They just don’t have the cash to do a Nightwish level production for YouTube. But, English accent aside, you can follow the lyrics pretty easily. And, they prove interesting:

Fool girl, fool girl Danger is your middle name Misfit is your lonely game Cool girl, cool girl Resenting everyone you see Cos they’re what you don’t want to be Conflict with the enemy Things you’ve seen so commonly Sort of underground, ain’a. I asked the lady about the lyrics, here’s what she had to say: "I never analyze how I write music or songs, it just seems to happen. However I think I’m quite an introverted writer. A lot of my songs come from some deep routed anger that I have suppressed. I can be very dark but I have noticed recently, since our album came out and I’ve had to talk about the songs more, a lot of them are actually very positive and about not giving into the negativity! I don’t fear being brutally honest with my lyrics. I write from the heart, in the moment and then get embarrassed about it later haha!" A little different take on the theme, but worth paying attention to.

There’s some softer, more melodic material that makes more use of the vocal. Scum has a bit of this, although you still get those guitars crashing through to keep you on your toes. You get a little different feel for this music than with some, there’s a raw edge to it, something less prepared, more original. I asked Anna-Christina about that too, how the music evolved: "Since the start of Lilygun, I have been the sole songwriter. I record all the songs and then the players learn them from the recordings. There have been many players in the band so each player adds their own flavour to the songs. It seems to work and makes life less complicated in a band where the members are always changing! With the production of this album, Belle (Star, the drummer) was an important part of the whole record. He picked and poked around the songs to get the best sound out of them. Two heads are better than one and his experience with production really had a huge impact on the way the album sounds."

Conversations takes us back to those guitar driven sounds where the exchange between the vocals and the axe are the conversation of most interest. You get some really interesting individual items here. There are the guitars, of course. But, here the vocals are more demanding, the message seems to be more direct. It’s clearly an original interpretation of the Femme Metal musical direction. Again, Anna-Christina had some thoughts on the subject: "That’s a hard question to answer but to be honest I’ve never felt like I fitted in! I’m an extremely unpredictable, changeable person so it’s hard to know what type of front-women I am. When Lilygun performs, during the set the atmosphere changes throughout and that’s because I change a lot. I’m a bit of a walking contradiction! I want to be free onstage. Like the music, I don’t want to analyze it because when you’re on stage, the audience can see straight through you. Never lie. They can tell when you’re lying. You have to be totally free to do and be anything in that particular moment. I can be very aggressive and creepy and then turn around and be very vulnerable. I hate being put in a box!"

Well, when you’ve looked the Reaper in the eye, and he blinked first, very little can threaten you. And, in our case, the Heavenly Choir’s loss is our gain. And my psychological and physiological status has seen a corresponding move forward, with a little help from Puerto Rico. Rock on.

9 / 10