Review PHIL CAMPBELL AND THE BASTARD SONS ‘Kings of the Asylum’

Actually Phil Campbell And The Bastard Sons started as a kind of site-project in the last years of Motörhead. Their guitarist Phil Campbell initiated the band and it was in 2016 in Wacken where the new name of the band was announced. Shortly thereafter followed an EP and after the debut album ‘The Age of Absurdity’ was also a success, Phil Campbell And The Bastard Sons immediately brought a second album on the market.

As the band name already indicates, it is more or less a family business of the Campbells. Father and sons indulge their passion for down-to-earth rock’n’roll and after Joel Peters came on board as a new singer in 2021, there was nothing standing in the way of recording the successor to ‘We’re the Bastards’.

For me the new album is the best of the five guys so far. In total there are eleven songs on the record, and during the almost 40 minutes there is no moment of boredom. On the contrary. Everything that comes out of the speakers is first-class hard rock that benefits from Peters’ versatile rock voice. With songs like the driving ‘Strike the Match’ you immediately feel taken back to the 80s, especially in the brilliant chorus. Yet the songs sound anything but old-fashioned.

Faster is the approach of ‘Too Much is Never Enough’. The band presses the pedal hard and also with ‘The Hunt’, which embodies the Motörhead references, Phil Campbell and his guys do not compromise.

The band continues with the punky ‘No Guts! No Glory!” where the guys give all they have in the tank. The closing ‘Maniac’ also inhales that certain punk spirit with its sing-along chrous, but also builds on a solid dose of rock’n’roll power.

‘Kings of the Asylum’ contains first class rock which shows that rock’n’roll is not a question of generations but instead represents an attitude towards life. In this case it’s a kick-ass approach which manifests itself in eleven songs. More of it please.