In this musical climate it takes real guts to be in a young classic rock band and announce that your goal is to take over from legends like Whitesnake, Deep Purple and Aerosmith as bona fide arena headliners. But with this scorching second album, Inglorious have taken a telling step towards achieving that aim and proved that such unabashed confidence isn’t misplaced.
For a band with an encyclopaedic knowledge of rock ‘n’ roll’s glorious history, it seems Inglorious have made one big mistake, though. Don’t they know they’re supposed to suffer a sophomore slump before breaking big with album number three? Clearly not, for this almighty follow up to last year’s well received, if somewhat flawed, debut has ironed out previous kinks, ditched elements that didn’t work and built on all the promise it displayed.
For starters, there are less mid-tempo numbers and more ball-breaking rockers, with the result a better paced, more consistently thrilling record.
Sure, the band still excel when peddling slower, heavier anthems like Change Is Coming, but they truly catch fire when hitting the accelerator on the finger-flicking Taking The Blame, sexy sting of No Good For You and gasoline-fuelled romp High Class Woman, replete with wink-wink David Coverdale howls.
‘II’ is the swaggering sound of a hungry gang really hitting their stride. You can still hear the band’s influences – Deep Purple, Whitesnake and Led Zeppelin – but their own identity is really taking shape, with the contribution of Swedish guitarist Andreas Eriksson, who joined after the debut was written, strengthening their classic rock credentials by bringing the kind of iconic, indelible riffs Inglorious’ bow was lacking.
From the pounding, funky groove that propels I Don’t Need Your Loving to the crashing delta blues chug of Read All About It and spunky spring of Tell Me Why, there’s a buffet of riffs to satisfy the appetite of even the most discerning classic rock connoisseur. And they all sound immense thanks to Kevin Shirley, whose mixing skills have taken the band’s powerhouse sonic vibrations to another level and fittingly mirrored their musical evolution.
The group’s trump card, though, remains vocalist Nathan James. After stints on crappy reality shows, any doubts about the frontman’s pedigree were blown away by his performance on the band’s debut. That said, there were moments on that record where he was over singing, as if trying too hard to prove his rock ‘n’ roll credentials. His performance is better judged here and, whether soulfully crooning or hitting incredible screams on the mesmerising Making Me Pay, he’s imperious throughout, serving and intensifying the songs without showboating.
For all the plaudits, there’s still a feeling that Inglorious have the personnel and potential to get even better. There are hooks – Black Magic – that could be sharper and catchier, something that would be helped by beefing them up with more backing vocals. James can certainly sell a chorus by himself, but it’s no surprise that when they employ said technique on the likes of Tell Me Why, I Got A Feeling and Change Is Coming, the results are more memorable and consequently tailor-made for huge audiences to sing along with.
There’s little doubt that if this album was released in the 1970s Inglorious would stand alongside the acts they aspire to emulate. In the here and now the outcome is a lot less certain, but if the band fail to achieve that goal then the problem certainly won’t be with their music. It will pretty much represent the British public’s greatest fuck up since Brexit.
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