It’s lazy to label Norwegian sleaze machines The Cruel Intentions as the direct descendants of an unholy union between Guns n’Roses and Hanoi Rocks simply due to the presence of a few well-placed bandannas and a low-slung axe or two; it’s almost as if the people doing the labelling have only those two bands as a ‘sleaze’ reference point, happy to ignore anything and everything else that may have gone in to the creation’s of one of the best hard rock outfits currently treading the boards of rock n’roll…

… Which would be an error only fairly seen as heinous when history comes to write the definitive annals of rock n’roll. In that worthy tome, The Cruel Intentions will be seen as quite simply the best late-period melodic hard rock band of them all, bar none. Just one listen to new album Venomous Anonymous will attest to that, but, and it’s a big but, it’s highly unlikely you’ll want to stop at just the one lugful of this life-affirming slab of feelgood thrillz an’spillz. The Sentinel Daily office – and it’s immediate environs, natch – has been enjoying repeated airings over the last couple of weeks, with stupendous track like Sunrise Over Sunset, Final Deathroll and Goddamn Monday getting a right old hammering at high, high volume…

And again, repeated exposures to this remarkable hair metal homage – it really will put a smile on your face ten miles wide – prove just how limited that guns n’hanoi comparison really is; This is a band that runs the full gamut, influence wise, confirming long-held suspicions around these parts that hair metal in 2022 – if it’s worth it’s salt – absorbs as many influences from pop punk and even bellicose metalcoreists like Black Veil Brides as it does from Axl Rose and Joe Elliott, which is surely a good thing. Hell, there are even parts of this delirious, rabble rousing record that sound like Children of Bodom jamming out Y&T‘s greatest hits – and from I’m listening that’s a pretty glorious noise, let me tell yaz.

At it’s most ‘traditional’ – the semi-balladic Bad Vibes, for instance – The Cruel Intentions prove they can give fellow retroactivists Crazy Lixx a run for their money in the rose-tinted fistbang stakes; but, pleasingly, there’s so much more to this band, and this album, than mere nostalgic firestoking. Lizzy DeVine and company cut a seriously delicious jib throughout Venomous Maximus; a true band of brothers making throwaway music that actually matters within the context of the troubled society that birthed it. This is serious feelgood music, and you need it in your life.

Venomous Anonymous releases on June 3rd.