They come from Sweden. Their record label are pushing them into the ‘garage rock’ Pigeon Hole. They’ve got a three letter name with the word ‘City’ in the middle… You know what they’re gonna sound like, right?

Of course you do. And you’d be right in your prognostications. Absolutely right. But that doesn’t make Beat City Tubeworks any less goddamn enjoyable to listen to, oh no! This has to be one of the finest records of it’s type I’ve heard in a long, long, time…

An initial thought I jotted down on a handy telephone bill as I first listened to IJCBITI was ‘Paul Stanley singing early Gene Simmons songs with early seventies Stones backing tracks’. And whilst I stand by that first stab at placing the band, there are an awful lot of layers to peel away from that base core – onion rock, anyone?

Erik Linder does indeed have a whiff of the Starchild about him, but it would be wrong to write him off as a mere copyist. Likewise Linder and guitar chum Kristian Rigo both whip up a ‘classic rock’ storm with their axes, and plenty of familiar names will spring to mind – pleasingly, they often come across like Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma of Blue Öyster Cult circa Secret Treaties – however the sum total is a sound that is ‘like’, but not ‘the same as’ all the greats from the glory days of bombastic, guitar-driven heavy rock n’roll. At it’s peak, on the heady Stuck In A Groove, or Not A Fortunate Son, you’ll feel your faith in rock n’roll being restored by the pure power of riffage and a catchy chorus. Great rock n’roll will do that to you, and there are several moments of genuinely great rock n’roll on I Just Cannot Believe…

Originally self-released in 2016, this remastered reissue certainly deserves a wider audience than it originally received, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t – this is truly world class stuff. If you like anyone mentioned above you’ll love BCT – get them into your ears as soon as is humanly possible!

I Just Cannot Believe It’s The Incredible is re-released on December 6th.