Album Review: Black Country Communion, "Black Country Communion 2"

Hot-on-the-heels of their impressive self-titled debut comes Black Country Communion 2. Produced again by Kevin Shirley, 2 cements the Anglo-American supergroup's reputation as the natural successors to classic rock titans Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.

From 'burning' openers The Outsider and the mighty Man In The Middle, to the sublime swagger of An Ordinary Son and Little Secret, the power quartet's second opus is another glorious collection of riff-based, rip-roaring heavy rockers and breathtaking blues-rock compositions. While thunderous stand-out Smokestack Woman literally rips its way 'live' out of the speakers, it's the epic Glenn-Hughes-inspired Save Me and soulful album closer Cold that are definitely the true masters here. Destined to become a classic... BCC '2' has that WOW factor - best rock album of the year by far!

Mark Crampton
Rock iKon
13th June, 2011

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!