CONEY HATCH — Coney Hatch (review)

CONEY HATCH — Coney Hatch album cover Album · 1982 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
voila_la_scorie
Coney Hatch got their big break when after a show at a Toronto club they spotted Max Webster lyricist Pye Dubois sitting at a table. He told them that they sounded good and that Kim Mitchell had just left Max Webster and would probably be interested in producing an album for the band. That got them signed to Anthem Records and taken under the wing of Ray Daniels Management. After some troubles with the recording process were solved, the album was completed and released in 1982.

Coney Hatch's self-titled debut is a solid piece of guitar driven hard rock. Though the band got lumped in with heavy metal (in those days Judas Priest, Scorpions, Blue Oyster Cult, Van Halen, Motörhead, and AC/DC were all collectively know as heavy metal) there's a radio friendly aspect to a couple of songs like "You Ain't Got Me" and "Hey Operator", the latter scoring them a top 20 hit in Canada and getting them on the U.S. airwaves.

To hear the more gritty side of Coney Hatch, you need to listen to songs like "Devil's Deck" (later to become a favourite of Steve Harris when the band toured with Iron Maiden), the AC/DC-inspired "Stand Up", the more aggressive numbers like "I'll Do the Talkin'" and "We Got the Night", and the fan favourite "Monkey Bars". This is where the tight, in-your-face hard rock punches and riffs best show up. But you'll not want to skip over "No Sleep Tonight" (another AC/DC type song, also crossed with KISS) or "Love Poison". The Rock Candy reissue includes three bonus tracks of which the misleadingly titled "Dreamland" and a demo called "Sin After Sin" match the rest of the album in punchy hard rock.

One of Coney Hatch's big assets are having two lead vocalists in Carl Dixon (rhythm guitar) and Andy Curran (bass). Dixon's voice has that smooth yet powerful arena rock sound while Curran's voice almost has a sneer to it that could sound a bit like Dave Mustain talk-singing rather than just sneering. Hear Dixon on "Devil's Deck" and Curran on "Monkey Bars".

Coney Hatch quickly moved ahead thanks to people at Anthem and Ray Daniels Management getting them in the right place. The toured with Judas Priest for the North American leg of the "Screaming for Vengeance" tour and though a U.K. tour with either Whitesnake or Rainbow fell through, the band were championed by Kerrang! Magazine's Paul Sutor and Geoff Barton. The future looked bright. A year later the sophomore release hit the stores, but label support waned when no hit single turned up.

As for this review, this debut effort is an excellent offering of hard rock that needs to be played loud. What else?
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