Eighties Matchbox B-line Dthe - Blood & Fire [CD]

THE EIGHTIES MATCHBOX B-LINE DISASTER emerge from the mire - having found a new home at Black Records - with album, 'Blood and Fire'. 'Horse Of The Dog' introduced the most visceral, spiritual, colourful and intense howlabilly head-fuck of a band ever to dive screaming from the front of a stage to chew off your face. 'The Royal Society' made them one of the most inventive: the raw ore of the debut honed into mighty slabs of skewed melodic majesty. And now, with 'Blood And Fire' - brought to you via Russia and rehab and forged in the searing heat of unquenchable souls on fire - they've shown themselves to be true rock survivors too. The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster; they're just too special to die. "The drugs nearly killed me," says bassist Sym Gharial of the fraught months after the release of their last single, the self-released 'In The Garden EP' in July 2007. "I was out of my mind, I had to be sectioned for a month, I went to a treatment centre. It was the best thing I've ever done. Hopefully that's all behind us. There was always some confusion whether we were teetotal or raging heroin addicts - it was somewhere inbetween. But that was before the start of the New Beginning." Despite increasing chart success, by the end of 2004 they were without a label, by 2005 they were without a lead guitarist as founding member Andy Huxley left to form the even more extreme horror-jazz outfit Vile Imbeciles, and by 2008 they were without many of their marbles too. See, following the release of the 'In The Garden EP' in 2007 and a subsequent tour with Queens Of The Stone Age, Guy had taken time out to dip his toe into acting, flying to Russia to play the lead role (in French despite not speaking the language) in a short film called Skies Black Out, written and directed by FJ Ossang. Within months of his return he found they were splitting with their management, their replacement lead guitarist Rich Fownes was leaving to join Nine Inch Nails and Sym was only fit for rehab. Many lesser bands would have hung up their hairspray, but TEMBD? Instead they recruited another new guitarist - local Brighton acquaintance Tristan McLenahan - after he walked into the video rental shop Guy was working in and "I could almost hear music emanating out of his head. I'd been teetotal for about six months by that point." "It was like the band had restarted when Tristan joined," says Sym. "It felt like we were starting again, new songs, new era, new management."