Black Country Communion - Collide

Boy oh boy, do we have some good ol’ fashioned rock n’ roll for you this week, faithful listeners. In fact, the sheer calibre of personnel that make up this week’s band of choice puts them comfortably in the top handful of rock supergroups by some margin, with a rollcall of previous members of bands such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Dream Theater and more.

Let’s get some meat on those bones, then. Black Country Communion was put together in 2009 in Los Angeles, California by four verifiable legends of the music game; bassist and vocalist Glenn Hughes (he of Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and ELO for two weeks in the 1970s), drummer Jason Bonham (son of kit-legend John Bonham who has played with Led Zeppelin and Foreigner), keyboardist Derek Sherinian (Dream Theater, KISS, Whitesnake) and guitarist Joe Bonamassa (for who it might be quicker to list the people he hasn’t played or recorded with). That’s a higher bar than the world’s easiest limbo competition and the four members have kept the ship steady since their formation bar a hiatus from 2013-16 – the four founders have been the group's only members, which makes the whole thing even more impressive.

The band play a distinct, flavourful mix of bluesy, guitars-dipped-in-treacle goodness by way of the punchy, hard rock influence of Hughes’ former places of employ (bar ELO, obviously). They’re pure rock and roll to their very core, with those distinctly Led Zeppelin-meets-Deep Purple fingerprints all over every album they’ve put out that fill me with the sort of nostalgia that only the real classics do, which is hard to find in this day and age (speak up, sonny, my hearing ain’t what it used to be, etc).

We are going to lay down one of the tracks from their newest album for your weekly dose of auditory medicine, 2017’s BCCIV providing us with Collide and a big, bold track full of the stuff we love to boot. Lashings of thumping hard rock, a caramel centre of low and slow blues goodness and a generous helping of the rainbow sprinkles of Glenn Hughes over the top – even in his mid-sixties, the man is kicking ass and taking names. No moderation is required on this one, grab a spoon and shovel as much in as you can. I won’t tell your dentist!