Well it ain't pop music, and it was never was meant to be. The now defunct Solid Gold Hell were pure southern gothic. Like their live shows, their recorded output is a combination of travelling medicine and old-time bare-knuckle boxing show: a sound that threatens to take on all-comers and sell you something for your soul. In the years since this band crawled out of an unholy alliance between Flying Nun's Spud and JPS Experience, Solid Gold Hell have taken on a string of challengers to the mantle of most out-there and fully rocking live group Auckland has to offer. Their live shows were a mixture of skewed musical precision and pure pathos - for every moment of sheer rocking exhilaration as rhythm section Gary Sullivan and Colleen Brennan duel with guitar maestro Matthew Heine, there's the sight and sound of singer Glen Lorne Campbell growling out a lungful of death-rattle over the mic. And the show finale, with Glen on trombone and Gary drumming with one hand and holding his trumpet in the other, while Colleen and Matthew play heads-down string-torture, is the kind of showbiz that sells snake oil to indians. Their album 'The Blood And The Pity' hits the same way. Musically, Solid Gold Hell have never given us anything as good as 'The Country Sow', a song that swings out like the arm of a punchdrunk Joe Louis. There's never been anything as hard-out as 'Heavenly Badness' or riffery as dynamic as the mini-album's title track or 'My Father Before Me' from this lot before either. This is music to put a little fear in your soul. And as the lady said, it also rocks. Beware.
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