Understandably, given the lifestyle Warrior Soul frontman Kory Clarke has led and continues to proselytise, the man’s voice is royally buggered.

You’d think this might be a problem, but it really isn’t. Clarke’s hoarse rasp, a whispered roar as it were, fits the music perfectly, the sibilant delivery giving a Gollum-like underworld glamour to the tales of booze, drugs and hoes young Kory loves weaving into his post-apocalyptic warnings about the rich and eminently well-positioned. Add to this a fantastically well-drilled and heavy band and you’ve got the recipe for a rockin’ half hour…

Opening address American Idol is a perfect start, whilst the first ‘proper’ song, I Get Fucked Up, sets out the manifesto by which Clarke (and, by extension us – he’s nothing if not an everyman rapporteur) lives with a desperate fire n’brimstone attack backed by a pleasant Cult-meets-Danzig-meets-the Pistols musical backdrop that really gets you out of your seat. So far so good.

The title track details our hero’s predilection for ‘the booze’ in bibulous style, Clarke’s Keith Morris/Lemmy vocal juxtapositions are absolutely perfect, and the song does indeed make the listener wonder if there’s anything worth drinking in the fridge. Bash crash, let’s get smashed indeed!

Going Broke may well end up being an unnervingly-accurate soundtrack to mine and many other lives, whilst the closing one-two of I Got the Rock and That’s How We Roll, whilst doubtless being autobiographical songs for Clarke will also strike a fair few chords out in listener-land.

And that’s it really. Warrior Soul in 2017 don’t perhaps have the voice-of-a-generation pretension that earlier hits like The Losers may have hinted at (save for the fact that we’ve all grown up together and a night back on the lash is the best most of us in Clarke’s generation can hope for now), but for a balls-out, fun-at-the-rock-club-with-a-pint-and-a-shag-in-prospect soundtrack you won’t go far wrong with Back on the Lash.
Lash