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Budgie's fourth album "In for the Kill!" carries on with the sound the band established from the beginning: hard and heavy driving riff-based rock with some strong heavy blues. Drummer Ray Phillips left band after the third album and for this offering of powerhouse rock, Pete Boot took the stool.
From the first track, Budgie introduce another classic riff rocker in the title track. It's a longer song that switches to a heavy blues number in the middle before returning to the first part's music. Also here is "Crash Course in Brain Surgery" which was originally recorded as a single earlier in their career and was later covered by Metallica. Some will recall Metallica covering another Budgie song "Breadfan".
Budgie albums ( the ones I know ) include a Burke Shelley acoustic number or two and "Wondering What Everyone Knows" fills that necessity here. I personally find this one more enjoyable than the acoustic songs from my two other Budgie albums, "Budgie" and "Never Turn Your Back on a Friend". The acoustic tracks are usually short anyway.
"Zoom Club" is a hard rocking tribute to a club in Germany and includes a lengthy jam session and a cool hard rock riff. And let's not forget Shelley's high pitched notes after the long solo section!
"Hammer and Tongs" opens side two with a slow beginning of guitar volume dial notes before exploding with a very heavy blues-based eruption of a song. At times it's like the band are trying to make blues rock heavy enough to drop into a crusher in a scrapyard and kick it into a heap of wrecked automobiles. It eases up in the middle and Shelley howls in falsetto. Then it changes to what I always think of as heavy strip tease blues. No doubt guitarist Tony Bourge was pleased with all the soloing he got to do.
"Running from My Soul" takes on another boogieing bluesy heavy number with more of Bourge's six-string explorations. It's the shortest song on the album and doesn't have many lyrics. Just blazing guitar rock & roll.
The final track, "Living on Your Own" is the most progressive song on the album, going through different parts, one part heavy and melodic, another gentle and easy but with a bit of rust, yet another more traditional heavy but still holding on to the melodic side. For Budgie's repertoire up to 1974 this is likely one of their most progressive songs with different musical themes integrated into a single track. Certainly it stands out from the rest of the album which is comprised of mostly heavy rock and heavy blues boogie.