Swedish three piece Lipz have created a delightful tribute to the late eighties with their new album, Scaryman. We may be talking nostalgia here, but that needn’t be a bad thing. Quite the contrary, in fact…

There’s something in the Swedish rock DNA that allows them to effortlessly reanimate genres thought long past heir sell-by date – any genre of rock and metal, not just glam – and Lipz are no different. They know instinctively what makes for great sleazy listening, and there are several moments on Scaryman that are totally worthy of the glam Godz these boys are emulating.

Fight is a monstrous slab of melodic radio metal, featuring gang backing vocals and a quite magnificent solo. The track before it, Get Up on the Stage is almost as good, whilst Get It On, a steamy take on Vain-styled rabble rousing is also a bit of a corker. But the best track here by fair is the utterly titanic Running Away, a head-mangling mashup of Warrant, Skid Row and Dokken that hits the hard rock bullseye in exuberant, rose-tinted style.

The only thing that lets the band down is their slightly naff corpse-painted visages – but that might well be a personal thing and it wasn’t a problem for anyone I asked whilst dancing around my conservatory to this record the other day – but seriously that’s a small problem when the band have come up with such at-times-stunning hard rock.

If you like the bone-jarring riff mongery of Shout at the Devil and the pop sensibility of Open Up and Say Ahh, or the modern hard rock of Crazy Lixx then it’s hard to see this album failing for you on any level. We may not live in 1988 any more, but by cracky bands like Lipz make that dour, soul-consuming fact of life a fat lot more tolerable. A fat lot. If only I still needed flexnet…

Scaryman is out now.