- Australian heavy music is a strange beast, it seems to go through popular phases every twenty years or so. Since grabbing the world by the balls in the 1970s via AC/DC and the diverse highs of the 1990s with grunge and metal both being extremely popular genres, it has been bubbling away in the background and now raises its fiery head through The Neptune Power Federation, on their fourth album, Le Demon de L’Amour.

Clearly they’ve been busy during the pandemic, releasing a surprising record of dark, haunting (or should that be haunted?) love songs on Valentine’s Day. The album smashes through your speakers with first track Weeping on the Morn sounding equal parts Cheap Trick and AC/DC, then turning into a grooving space rock jam, before My Precious One kicks your speakers over with its chugging beat and wild, old school metal guitar solos.

Baby You’re Mine is a dark, funky trip that alludes to the thrill of the chase with wah-wah pedals and crunching keyboards galore, and then Loving You is Killing me swings back into a more traditional metal style with soaring solos and vocals and a gong… how very metal!! You just don’t hear this stuff in modern music anymore. Emmaline is a classic stoner fuzz with romantic interludes and harmonies.

I have to admit, I wasn’t completely tickled at the first track, but by the time I got to the third track I was cranking it to a level that would surely annoy the whole neighbourhood. Always a force to be reckoned with in the live arena, this album should be blasted from the rooftops this Valentines Day, and every other day.

- Judy Jetson.