Gunshot


[Gunshot Black Lebanon Volume 1 sleeve]"Black Lebanon Volume 1" (Album, 2024)

Ventilate Records

The first long player from Walthamstow’s original bad-boy hip-hop crew since 'International Rescue' (from 2000), and it's a game of two halves.
 
Opener DJ Specifik vs Gunshot is essentially a cut-up of their previous material, and as such is mildly diverting, but hardly vital, and sets the tone for the first side of the LP. The rest of the side is old demos, some of previously released material (Shanghai Badbwoy, Return Of The Gunshot), and two unheard songs (9 Months, Kane Rose Up) which are interesting, but dating from their later period, when the fire had mostly ebbed away. I'’s nice to hear Alkaline's vocal and Rix's backing on these old tracks, but they are the sort of the thing that would have been better put on the end of a full LP as bonus tracks.
 
The second side is markedly better – all new tracks featuring the current Gunshot line up – MC Mercury's raps over Bulldog's beats and production. As befits the passage of 30 odd years, it's not the breakneck Brit Core of the early '90s, but more considered, mid-paced and inexorable, similar (in terms of structures rather than instrumentation) to John Carpenter's electronic soundtrack work of the late '70s.
 
As you might expect, the lyrics are still dense, complex, metaphor heavy infodumps, but rather than the incandescent rage of classics like Mind of a Razor and Social Psychotic, this is the sound of older, wiser man, with the responsibilities and perspective that age brings, standing battered but unbowed by the horrors of the world.
 
Although The Streets (and Gunshot's place in them) still loom large, the subjects range further than the parochial concerns of a lot of Hip-Hop.
 
Highlights: Pistol ("Sound of sirens, Overthrow clowns and tyrants, but Pritti Patel keeps trying to drown the migrants, Anti-Vax Jack wants to doubt the science") and I, Mercury ("Culture Wars is pure pressure, While those at the back are smiling with pure pleasure, Tensions high, can't be measured, The slave-ship blood on the floor can't be weathered").
Previous single Alkaline which I had been slightly non-committal about previously, gets better every time I listen to it.
 
The download version has four extra tracks, two of which are new songs: Book of Love is INCREDIBLE, an angry dialogue with a God that absents himself from the lives of his creations, except to damn them for not worshiping Him with sufficient fervour ("You're right – I should tread more than lightly, Before you turn around and try to smite me, But the unrelenting horrors of war, And amputations under Sharia Law, Make me wonder what we're worshipping for").
 
Ghetto Heartbeat, although it shares the name of the single from 1997, is a completely new version with new lyrics ("These County Lines are like child abuse, While the real criminals are just ruling the roost"), and is a considerable improvement.
 
The other tracks are remixes of Hail To The King and Ghetto Heartbeat, both of which are better than anything on the first side of the LP.
 
Essentially, the extra tracks on the download version would have been better as the first side of the LP and vice versa, but with tracks as strong as ‘I, Mercury’, it hardly matters.
 
If you're a long-time Gunshot fan, this is definitely for you, and if you're new to the fold, it's a good jumping in point.
 
6/10 for the vinyl, 8/10 for the download

Nick Hydra (November 2024)

Buy it here: https://gunshot1.bandcamp.com/album/black-lebanon-album-volume-1


[Gunshot Alkaline sleeve]

"Alkaline" (Single, 2024)

Ventilate Records

Released as a tribute to the recently deceased MC Alkaline, musically, this is really good. It’s not much like their mid '90s Britcore pomp, which is no surprise as original DJ White Child Rix is no longer involved, but Curoc (Q-Roc to you) and Barry Blue are back on board to lend their not inconsiderable talents to bolster MC Mercury, which should have made it fantastic, as the two most recent Gunshot releases (Sulpher, Burn Cycle*) were seriously impressive, but sadly, this is slightly disappointing lyrically.

It's by no means bad, but songs about dead friends can easily be sentimental (not always a bad thing), and while this doesn't even get close to mawkishness (It's not Candle in the Wind after all) the subject matter doesn't play to Gunshot's strengths. Ironically, it really needs Alkaline to run a verse at his phenomenal, breakneck speed to make it great, but sadly, that can't happen now.

That said, any song with a line as East London as "A bigger man than you'll ever be, you wankers" in it can only ever be on the right side of excellent.

*Both angry, doom-laden diatribes that require your urgent attention. 6/10

Nick Hydra (July 2024)

Buy it here: https://gunshot1.bandcamp.com/album/alkaline


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