(BORDER)

Auckland-based grungy metallophiles The Symphony of Screams return to cleanse our jaded ears.

As you brace yourself for the aural mugging that is Radio Candy, it’s helpful to think of TSOS as the dentist you see once a year: It might hurt a bit, but he’s your best pal when you walk out of the surgery sans toothache. Now open wide and say AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH­!!!!

Support gigs with Ozzy Osbourne, Poison, Kiss, Lordi and Whitesnake attest to the power that TSOS bring to the stage, and guitarist/vocalist Te Matera Smith says that a prime focus in the making of Radio Candy was to authentically translate that energy in the studio. “We didn't set out with any conscious direction, just what ever flowed through us when jamming/writing. And that’s how we create, as a group, bringing individual ideas and working on them together without ego ‘till it feels and sounds like a TSOS record, and for us this one’s the best yet."

That inimitable touchstone of metalness, Kerrang! magazine, had only effusive praise for the band’s 2011 debut release, Heed to the Voices, calling TSOS ‘NZ Napalm [who] hammer it home all the way’. Like any group of musicians for whom market share is a laughably distant second to musical integrity, as a sophomore effort Radio Candy is an evolution that coalesces the band’s desire to be more than a bunch of fashion-reactive yes men. “We don’t make music to please anyone but ourselves, although I must admit, it feels good when someone else ‘gets it’ too.”

To torture yet another analogy: TSOS as a musical Jamie Oliver, on a mission to eradicate the uniformly grey sonic stodge that the bearded lunch ladies of pop keep trying to make us digest.

Track Listing:

1. Radio Candy
2. Angel of the Odd
3. Singers Oil
4. Dirty Southern Slut (Katrina)
5. Amsterdam Place
6. Masto With Gravy
7. Music Girl
8. Perfect World
9. Nothing Sacred
10. All That’s Black
11. Deceived
12. Never Be Closed
13. Symphony Of Screams