Gold Against The Soul

The Irish Times

August 20 1992 CITY EDITION

The punk polemicists from Wales try once again to prove they're "4-real" with this follow-up to the well-received Generation Terrorists LP. Gold Against The Soul gets more personal, singer, guitarist and main songwriter James Dean Bradfield digging into his poetic closets to find some suitably convoluted skeletons. From Despair To Where and Life Becoming A Landslide are just two postcards from that forgotten place where peace is just a hangman's noose away.

The hard-edged crypto-metal guitar assault is still there, and there's no shortage of hooks on which to hang Bradfield's somewhat ambiguous lyrics. Sometimes it sounds as if Bradfield is trying to fit square pegs in round holes, as he twists his tonsils round some very unwieldy verses. "1 am just a fashion accessory, cries Bradfield during La Tristesse Durera, and this album will stand as the perfect accessory for loudmouth political dissidents.