THE NEPTUNE POWER FEDERATION – MONDO TOMORROW: REVIEW

Apr 16
3 min read

THE NEPTUNE POWER FEDERATION

Mondo Tomorrow (Neptune Power Federation)

MEDICAL AUTHORITIES would probably not recommend listening to Mondo Tomorrow too often for men and women of a certain age. To do so, to advise patients to carelessly put this album on and then repeat, and repeat – and, just for good measure, go at it again, as at least one man in this demographic has done, ostensibly in the shape of scientific inquiry but let’s be honest, more like pubescent abandonment – could be seen as reckless and would certainly be seen as dangerous for what it induces in a listener.

But hey doc, if you gotta ago, you may as well go throwing your body around like you only heard the first part when the men’s-shed crew programmed slam poetry; singing in an unnatural register because you’ve always wanted to be like singer Imperial Priestess, though without her skill with elaborate headwear; making passing-bowling-balls faces during solos and Energiser Bunny bursts of air drumming any opportunity offered; chugging up and down furiously but metrically with one arm because a part of you suddenly decided being ultimate rhythm guitar machine Malcolm Young is god’s plan; and throwing around (sadly imaginary and impossibly still dark) long hair like you were whipping a cat-o-nine-tails not preparing the way for the worst chiropractic session of all time.

After all, it’s not like anyone else wants our bodies anyway. Amirite folks, amirite?

See the tricky bit is that while The Neptune Power Federation have album covers and song titles that look like auto-death metal (see And The Bones Decay and The Grip Of Death) or the punk resistance (see Living In The Gutter and Mind Controller) and guitarists Inverted Crucifox and Search & Destroy who can roll out riffs as easily as they might roll a rollie, they are both exactly that and way more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1xYnz_Et4o

Cybernetic Times has the kind of bass from Jaytanic Ritual that doesn’t so much intrude as insert, turn over and expand, and spooling synths competing with the guitars for frantic space. But with drummer River Styx charging hard, and backing and lead vocals simultaneously angelically choral and roughly stripping chrome, it comes at you like a space rock Buggles: video didn’t kill this radio star, it made him a T-1000 terminator.

Then The Grip Of Death puts The Priestess in high orbit and guitars in meat packing rooms, before turning trippy psychedelia – oh hi backwards sounding guitar! – and a wild bikini organ into a can’t-help-but-dance climax.

You get sirens and wah-wah soloing with decidedly non-Gershwin power chords and sneaky swing in Rhapsody In Blue, and in Mind Controller the answer to the eternal question of what Agnetha and Frida might have sounded like had Bjorn and Benny been fed on Thin Lizzy instead of schlager. Then to finish, distorted voices in The Barbarian Dominion must give way to Heart-like soaring before a return to the story recitation we first heard in the double-speed metal bubblegum opening/title track, the sort of thing you imagine having being borrowed from Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds, if it had been directed by Roger Corman.

Ridiculous and remarkable, hilarious and powerful, and smarter than it ought to be, Mondo Tomorrow is way, way too much fun. You’ll do yourself an injury enjoying it. If I were a doctor I definitely would not recommend it.