They?re named after an old British motorcycle which is quite appropriate, seeing as from the get go they barrel forth with such vim and vigour as to have thrown me back off my record listening stool onto my rump. Ok, so there?s the Blue Cheer influence but they don?t devolve into that retro grooving stoner rock tripe. There?s no soulful dude wailing either, just a roaring, petrol gulping, Iggy style snarl that sounds great and smells all wrong.

Even when the cosmic wall is breached they maintain a gnarled bitterness and bile that keeps it out of the hippy swamp and barrelling straight at your throat. ?I want to be a lightning bolt? isn?t a call for a shining higher form of consciousness- they just want to leave you a smoking, sooty black spot on the ground. ?Real Wood?s? mantra of ?don?t go to work, I just get hiiiigh? reminds more of Black Flag than any two bit hippy mumbling, they really are just ?Drunk in Space?.

Quite possibly the best record to listen to whilst reading my seventies Ghost Rider anthology, Vincent Black Shadow are a nasty blast of oily rock and roll fit only to blow holes in your stereo speakers and leave your jaw hanging slackly. 8/10 -- Rich Hopkins (7 August, 2006)