Album Review
Mad Daddy
Too Tough To Die
CD / DL / t-shirt
released 31 March 2024
Three years on from their Self-titled debut album and Mad Daddy, despite having a new drummer and bassplayer, are in essence the same full-throttle punk rock’n’roll blues juggernault hammering down the highway to hell and back. Although a touch more ‘Very Metal’ thinks Ged Babey.
I got some real good news / No one gives a fuck about you.. (Be Bad)
Mad Daddy are so god-damned nasty & gnarly on the penultimate track, with its throaty-vomitus vocal and peals of heavy-metal solo-ing ringing out, on a hymn to self-destruction, that I swear it would give Lemmy a boner and he’d have a little spin of approval in his grave.
Having brought up their cartoon sexism and casual misogyny when I reviewed the debut album, Mad Daddy respond by unapologetically writing a song called Hot Chicks: the only words being hot, chicks, sweet, babes and them my surname repeated over and over like a magic spell intended to summon Ian Astbury.
I’m just another cunt / tree boy… (Give It Some)
Are Beavis and Butthead still a thing? They’d love the dramatic pause in the first line to the last song.
Old School, cliched, trad, bad, jukebox metal, juvenile, delinquent, corny, horny – every ‘negative’ you throw at Mad Daddy they’ll just bat-back-atcha with a Fuck-Yeah! And a big grin as they slurp anther beer, light another cig and jump on a motor-sickle without bothering to put a helmet on! Fuck Yeah! They’re Rebels without a fucking clue about modernity, musical progression and current trends… They live on an island FFS, so they can be excused. ‘Progress’ is sumfing that only happens on the mainland they say.
Mad Daddy are Rock and Roll inspired by the Cramps, Ramones, Motorhead, the Stooges and rock’n’roll and the blues. The harmonica is their (not so) secret weapon. They are from the Isle of Man. They are a great live band I’m told. You all know this already as I wrote about them here, here, here, here and here.
Too Tough To Die is a Ramones title whine the pedants and the peasants, yeah, so-what – say Mad Daddy. Which makes a change from Fuck-Yeah!
The clichés they incorporate into every godamn song, Ride That Train (an essential blues trope the train) and Here To Stay – as in Rock’n’roll is… are part of Mad Daddys whole appeal and deeply ingrained.
Stoned is pure Feelgoods meets Bronze Age Motorhead. There aren’t (m)any bands under 50 playing this kinda rootsy stuff with as much energy and verve.
I’m An Outsider (And I Like It) is the brief but anthemic centrepiece and mission statement of Too Tough To Die…. which is a great album. But… In a way it’s just too similar to the first – there’s no real progression other than the fact that there’s a bit more of a bluesy-metal vibe, the vocals are more submerged beneath the guitar – which forces you to Play Loud – but then again, that was probably Mad Daddys intention? Whaddaya say guys? Fuck Yeah!
UK Tour Dates in poster below:
Buy from Bandcamp
All words Ged Babey
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