Ricky Warwick
Blood Ties
Earache Records
You might expect an artist of Ricky Warwick’s vintage to ease himself into his latest album, but you’d be mistaken. Attesting to an artistic fire that’s very much ablaze, opening track ‘Angels Of Desolation’ immediately sticks a size 10 boot through the speakers and is soon followed by the world’s biggest riff. There’s no time to mess around and Ricky and band get straight down to business to deliver a muscular brand of heartland rock and what comes bursting from these grooves is Ricky’s deep love for music. This isn’t an artist going through the motions, rather it’s a songwriter exploring the less travelled forks and byways along rock’s long highway. There’s an energy and vitality to these songs that places Blood Ties in the present, yet roots and influences can’t help but come to the fore via the Lizzy-like guitar harmonies on ‘The Crickets Stayed In Clovis’ and the MC5 proto-punk punch of ‘The Hell Of Me And You’. But mostly Blood Ties is the sound of an artist beating their own path (with a little help from friends, most notably Lita Ford and Billy Duffy) who, by tending his roots, has signposted a bright future.
Review by Peter Dennis.