Black Rooster – 74-75

London based garage punks Black Rooster have dropped their debut full length ‘74 – 75‘, but this is not your typical garage punk album, to start with there is a personal story that informs the album and gives insight into the band. Neither are the trio are not fronted by your typical girl, their front woman Lucille Rees (ex Screaming Violets) had a challenging and dysfunctional upbringing that has informed the fuzzed out fury that is Black Rooster. 74-75 is a brutally honest almost biographical full length that is delivered in 14 short chapters, it feels like an album could have been released at any time in the last 50 years and not sounded out of place.

Lucille’s background is intertwined with Black Rooster‘s debut full length, take, for example, the album’s lead single, Maladjusted, that recounts when Lucille’s adoptive Mother would take in and look after problematic children from London. Musically however, Black Rooster need no explanation, this is a soundtrack that owes a lot to the first wave of punk, the vocal delivery carries the same authentic off kilter feel that Poly Styrene delivered, this is backed by a primitive fuzzed out soundtrack that harks back not just to the first wave of punk, but back into the roots of the scene, their’s even a tribute to the godfathers of punk, The Stooges, in the form of Dog House.

What you get on 74-75 is a brutally honest album that delivers it’s message on waves of fuzz laden riffs, take the spirit of the likes of X-Ray Spex, Hagar The Womb and The Slits and cross that with the primitive rock ‘n roll of contemporaries such as Pussycat & The Dirty Johnsons and The Blue Carpet Band and you’re starting to get an idea of where Black Rooster are coming from. 74-75 is an album that captures the spirit of the early UK punk scene and drops it in 2021, it is abrasive and brutally honest and that may alienate some, but you just know that Black Rooster don’t give a fuck, this is who they are, take it or leave it.

74 – 75 is now available via streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer. Black Rooster will be appearing this summer at the legendary London Soho club St Moritz on 17th July.