Let’s get one thing out in the open from the very start. The Voodoo Six album First Hit For Free is the best new album I have heard in a long while. Let me explain.
London’s Voodoo Six are in fact five. The six title comes from the sixth card in Voodoo Tarot – Legba (the Devil). Don’t let that put you off, and if you fancy a dance with the devil in the pale moonlight – then this is right up your street. The album was originally released in 2006 under a different guise but the usual mind numbingly difficult problems with labels led to it going off like a damp squib. Not this time – not on your life.
Repackaged – re-mastered and re-released – as I’ve said this is quite simply the best new release I have heard in a long while. I am not the only person to hold that opinion either. None other than Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris — what better judge — says just that too.
There is a dilemma when reviewing a band such as Voodoo Six. The temptation is to go rattling on about influences and who they sound like. In some respects that is a compliment, but in others in can distract from the band itself. The best compliment I can write is that Voodoo Six are Voodoo Six, a band in their own mighty right, and will, I have no doubt, be quoted in reviews of future bands who will site them as their own influence. So let’s lay the comparisons aside and look at the band first.
Bass player Tony Newton, the man responsible for rattling my windows yesterday during the albums first play of many, has been at this point before. His previous band, Dirty Deeds, was signed to Steve Harris’s Beast label – they released three albums but, like many others, drifted apart.
It had, up until then, been a story straight out of Robert Johnson’s fateful meeting at those famous crossroads. Tony, a keen footballer, strolled into the dressing room on a local football pitch only to see Maiden’s Steve Harris sitting there. Steve and Tony formed a formidable partnership in attack and became great friends. When Dirty Deeds folded, Tony knew exactly where he wanted to go next and set about forming Voodoo Six.
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