Although ostensibly you could sum up Norway’s Juicer by saying they belong to Scandinavia’s ever lengthening legacy of punked-up rock n’roll bands – and yes, at times they do sound a bit like Gluecifer, The Gloria Story or The Hellacopters – there’s an awful lot more to these lads than tight trousers and a Thin Lizzy fixation…

You Scared Me Straight bears all the hallmarks of fellow Scandinavians The Night Flight Orchestra; yes! Yacht rock is clearly a vibrant thing all over the Northlands – whilst best track Catch 25 sounds like an unholy union between The Darkness and Judas Priest circa the Killing Machine album. This is an album for real rock anoraks, let me tell you…

The sleazy Unconditional Love – a song, as far as I can make out, about Dogs – mixes Kiss and The Scorpions in explosive style. By now you’ll be getting the idea that listening to this this album is nothing more than just a game of pinning the influence on the Donkey; and that’s true up to a point as, like most Scandirock, this is pretty derivative stuff. However the power lies in the delivery – which is first class – and the amusing (and very well put together) lyrics, which really make you sit and take notice of what’s going on. Burrito in particular will have you chuckling along like a good ‘un.

Throw in some cleverly worked in musical passages from ‘outside’ – the first reader to write to me via the Sentinel Daily email address with the answer to which Iron Maiden and Slayer songs are directly quoted musically will get a lovely SD t-shirt as a reward – and you have a really interesting album. It’s rare these days that an album carries no weak links at all, but I honestly believe that Mach IV is such an album – top notch stuff from start to finish.

And, despite my allusions to the contrary in my opening paragraph, there is a little bit of Thin Lizzy worship on the excellent Concussion Machine…

Concussion Machine is released today (September 21) through All Good Clean Records...