Fu Manchu: The Action Is Go

Fu Manchu, the band, has little in common with Fu Manchu, the stoic, goateed criminal mastermind of film-series fame. Instead of thinking up world-domination schemes, the band swaggers, hollers, and generally relies upon the 10th-grade brain that lies dormant in all of us. In the great scheme of things, Fu Manchu stands proud in the decades-old tradition of cock-rock, a lineage which includes the likes of Grand Funk Railroad, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, Masters Of Reality, Quicksand, ad infinitum. With heavy acid-guitar hooks and steady, if not outright repetitive, beats, The Action Is Go sounds a little like the work of each of these bands. It would be easy to fuck up the formula and be routed solely into the excesses of the genre, but fortunately, Fu Manchu possesses enough self-awareness to avoid that. If you don't need more balls-out rock in your life, steer clear. Fu Manchu has its niche, and it makes no apologies for that; The Action Is Go is a stiff dose of full-on hedonism to wash away the bad taste of bland alternative bands.