The Royal Society

The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster from Brighton, England, created a short lived but incandescently bright explosion of rock’n’roll energy through the 2000s. Thanks to singer Guy McKnight’s Elvis-y tones and a lot of twang on their debut album The Horse of the Dog they were often called goth / rockabilly revivalists, with frequent, and partially fair, Birthday Party / Cramps / Misfits comparisons. They were much, much more than that, though — and on this, their second album, they really took flight. If you wanted to find reference points you could start with Beefheart, Buttholes and Slayer and go from there, but really this is about something far more elemental and instant - a tapping into a deep cultural electrical current that surges through everything.