Hawklords were one of the first splinter groups from late Seventies Hawkwind, when Dave Brock and Robert Calvert were joined by bassist Harvey Bainbridge, Pilot’s Steve Swindells and drummer Martin Griffin for a short-lived but brilliant incarnation.
Thirty years later, Hawklords was reborn from the ex-Hawkwind survivors' club – Nik Turner, Ron Tree, Danny Thompson, Jerry Richards, Alan Davey, Adrian Shaw, Harvey Bainbridge, Steve Swindells and Martin Griffin among them – to play benefits for dear departed Hawk alumni Robert Calvert and later Barney Bubbles, the band's visionary set and album sleeve designer.
It’s old-fashioned futurism and dread dystopian visions
A slimmed-down line-up, sans Turner, Davey, Thompson and Griffin, released an excellent studio album of punky, churning psychedelic space rock, We Are One, in 2012, with Dream following in 2013, Censored coming last year, and now, with R:Evolution the great tradition of stupendously heavy, dystopian, hypnotic space rock to unshackle the mind from the body continues.
Bainbridge on synths is the sole remaining original Hawklord, with Richards, from the Nineties Hawkwind line-up, the guitars at the lower end of the spectrum. Arguably, the mothership had no better frontman in its latter days than punkadelic bassist-singer Ron Tree, a great rock'n'roll voice with an unhinged frontman personae – and he’s in fine fettle throughout.
There are plenty of nods to Hawkwind's past – the Levitation-like thud of crunchy opening track “Reanimator”, while “One Day” is reminiscent of “Hurry on Sundown”, and “The Joker” quotes one of Calvert’s classics, “Spirit of the Age”. On the gargantuan, grinding universe of riffology, electronics and spoken word that is the album closer, “Rise of the Machines” (er, they’ve already risen, lads – too late…) these veterans of ancient psychedelic wars are on top form. An hour of this and it feels like a good snort of acid, Vim and bathtub speed.
It’s old-fashioned futurism and dread dystopian visions in free festival hippy punk threads, portentous at times, daft at times, and while there’s no song as catchy and stripped-down as 2012’s “We Are One” single, the world remains a much better place with this refusenik, churning ideagram of heavy voyages past still going round and round in it.
- Hawklords tour from 18 October to 7 November
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