The moon is full and the Wolfman, Dracula, The Mummy and Frankenstein’s Monster shoot out of the graveyard at midnight in a V12 midnight-black hearse with chrome flames and a glowing skull hood ornament. As they hit the open road looking for a frat party to terrorise or a drag race to win, Wolfman pushes an 8-Track cassette into the in-hearse hi-fi and turns the volume all the way up. What’s the band of choice for our ghoulish gang? Who else but the best masked rock’n’roll band in the world, Black Mekon!
Read The Room…Beware the Moon is their new 2-track release featuring the brand new song ‘Tonight, I Strike’. This is a release timed for Hallowe’en, and slinks in on a low-low guitar riff with tremolo shuddering like our fright-night terror. “Read the room…beware the moon”, a gravel-growl opines; as much Wolfman Jack as full moon beast. Theremin wails accompany the riff like demented bats, and the power chord chorus appears out of nowhere like The Count transmogrifying from bat to Drac.
As well as their own track you also get a crazy Dexedrine-fuelled version of the classic Rodgers and Hart song ‘Blue Moon’ made famous by The Marcels and used in the 1981 film American Werewolf In London. The Marcels version is only 2’18”, the Black Mekon version is a ripping 1’40”.
I am always happy to sit in the rumble seat as Black Mekon burn rubber on asphalt, and with their recent covers album Yukon, Wekon, Mekon they continue to hold a special place in my heart as one of my all-time favourite acts. Forget Zorro, the Green Hornet, or the Boy Wonder; Black Mekon are the coolest masks in town and as a live act they not only raise the dead but make them do the Fug, the Batusi and the Jitterbug.
Black Mekon socials: Facebook | Instagram | X | Bandcamp | Spotify
Review by Paul F Cook
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