Gut-Scrapers are, basically, not much fun.

Just when my day was looking like it would be filled with joyful noise, French potty mouths Gut-Scrapers growl their way onto the stereo with their sophomore album, kicking off with the delightful ‘Cheers Motherfuckers’. I don’t know why, but France seems to be lagging behind much of Europe when it comes to producing good Rock bands; Gut-Scrapers won’t be changing that statistic anytime soon.

On the plus side, ‘Gimme Your Soul’ has some good guitar bits in it. Either Fred Fages or William Cortier (or perhaps both as it’s not clear who does lead) is a talented guy and so there’s a great big tick in the plus column for some of the guitar solos. Unfortunately, that’s all there is to enjoy here, as GS produce some mind numbingly uninspired music. For the most part the album just plods along like a walking tree (and not one of the cool ones from Lord Of The Rings), going in one ear and out the other. Vocalist Thierry Pitarch has rather a grubby voice, all growl and no charm, which coupled with the songs results in a headache provided free with every listen.

Gut-Scrapers are, basically, not much fun. There’s certainly nothing here for your typical Fireworks & Rocktopia reader and even the atypical ones will find that this is more of a barrel scraping than anything else.

Alan Holloway