Part Chimp - Thriller

Part Chimp vocalist and guitarist Tim Cedar claims that Thriller’s opening track Trad is a stoner rock piss-take that happily came up trumps. If so, it proves the old maxim that you really have to love something in order to successfully mock it. Trad is the blueprint par excellence on the Chimp’s third album for the aptly-named Glasgow label Rock Action. The obvious post-rock influences that once tethered the fluid four-piece have been, on the whole, cut in favour of gigantic sludge riffs that drag everyone from Black Sabbath to Mudhoney to Trail of Dead in their wake. At times, Thriller is as ambitious as its title suggests, particularly its closing triumvirate of piecemeal epics which fleet between all manner of perennial rock touchstones. But it remains a concise statement from a band taking a confident stride forwards with no, oh humour me, monkeying around. [Darren Carle]