Justice. In the music industry, there’s precious little of it, especially at the lower end of the success ladder, and so it seems almost inevitable to see Melbourne hopefuls Massive getting another worldwide push from extreme metal label Earache when other, surely more deserving antipodean acts languish in the ‘couldabeen’ file, destined forever to live in penury as unacknowledged artists while the likes of Airbourne and, to a lesser extent, Massive stride the world like latter day cock rock colossi…

But that’s not the point of issue here; We are here to talk about whether the new Massive album, Destination Somewhere, is any good. So let’s have a non-judgemental listen shall we?

I thought the band’s debut album was a bit of a disappointment – anodyne to the point of sterility when it needed to show a bit of grit and filth, and the first three tracks on DS show all the signs of repeating the dose, being sort of by-numbers Guns n’Roses lite that stay in the brain not one second longer than it takes to play them; However, give the album a chance – don’t listen to those first three tracks again, if that’s what it takes – let it worm it’s way into your affections and you’ll actually find the kernel of something potentially quite special starting to emerge.

The title track, for instance, is a nice slice of summery hard rock complete with Brendan Forward’s slick soloing and a pleasant vocal from Brad Marr cheering the listener no end; Up in Smoke sounds like something fellow Australians Hell City Glamours might have come up with a few years ago, and it’s here that that all-important ingredient manifests itself – there’s a real sense of grit and determination to this track, a sincerity that heretofore this band seems to have been a bit lacking in. It’s all the better for it, and to be honest if only the second half of this album counted for review purposes then we’d be hailing something of a minor classic in our midst, as ferocious rockers like Circus embed themselves in the listener’s consciousness and potentially herald a bright future indeed if the band can chip away some of the sheen and get down and dirty a bit more often.

Still not quite firing on all six, then, but there really are signs that Massive might be evolving into something really quite worthwhile. Watch this space – album number three could be, well… massive.