It’s taken eight years, but Austrian  hair metal revivalists Mädhouse have finally fulfilled their early and enduring promise. Always good, they have, with new album Plead The Fifth, finally achieved greatness, delivering in the process one of the best albums of it’s kind – indeed, one of the best ever released since the heyday of the hair metal genre.

I’m not making this up; For years we’ve sat back, content to acknowledge bands like Crazy Lixx as the undisputed modern contenders to the modern hair metal crown… but now, Plead The Fifth proves, gloriously, that there’s a new sheriff in town.

It’s not all good news-   – the slightly over-ambitious cover of Giant‘s classic power ballad I’ll See You In my Dreams sees the band falling quite a bit short of the original – but in every other respect this is a virtually perfect album. Whereas before the band has before always stuck to a relatively rigid replaying of the Crüe/Skids playbook, here they broaden the palette quite a bit, thanks to a bravura performance behind the mic from Tommy Lovelace, who catapults himself into hair metal’s Champions League on tracks like Get A Grip, wherein he throws names like Jizzy Pearl, Stephen Pearcy, Tom Keifer and Steve Whiteman into a big pot and emerges with an irresistible mashup of all four. It’s dazzling, scintillating, life-affirming stuff, let me tell yas…

If you don’t believe me, make your way as soon as possible to a place within earshot of a playback of Live and Tease; If you know, you know, as they say – and if you were around at the time this sort of track ruled the US airwaves then you will literally be brought to tears by the absolute gonzoid majesty that unfurls before your naked, steaming ears as the track reveals it unabashed charms… this is the good stuff, and then some, and the fact that a band has come up with such a titanic track in 2025 brings more gladness to my heart than I ever thought possible…

I’ll stop there, before you become desensitised to the hyperbole and simply implore you to get those pre-orders in now… If you’re disappointed please accept my apologies now – and then go away and rethink your approach to enjoying music…

Plead The Fifth releases on July 11th.