Slaughter And The Dogs - White Heat (2026) Hi-Res

Manchester, UK. First of all, if, like me, you haven’t been keeping up to date with Slaughter and The Dogs, rein in your expectations. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but if you’re expecting another full on punk classic like the band’s brilliant classic 1978 debut, the feral Do It Dog Style (surely one of the best debut albums ever?), you’re going to get a bit of a shock. I won’t lie – I knew they were still performing, but I had no idea they’d released another 5 albums since then, with White Heat being their seventh studio effort in total (I think, though it’s not all that clear from the sources I looked at). And as Albums Editor, I’m really quite ashamed of this!

So the record kicks off with ‘Get A Life‘, and immediately we realise that the sound has evolved over the years to sound rather closer to the likes of Ian Astbury and The Cult than anything resembling their humble punk beginnings, and founding member Mick Rossi has clearly become something of an afficionado on guitar over those last four decades. Maybe he already was, who knows? You just didn’t let on about things like that, in those days!

Next comes a Velvet Underground cover – the title track (give or take a few words) – which, they may or may not thank me for saying, reminded me somewhat of Status Quo, in this version. Don’t yell at me though, as it isn’t even meant to be a criticism. I have a lot of time for Quo and think they are unfairly berated. In all honesty, this is arguably the best effort at turning VU into an actual ‘pop’ song that I’ve heard. And I mean ‘pop’ as in commercially saleable, not in the modern day sense of so many chart records sounding the bloody same. And no, I don’t care if that does make me sound like your parents.

Arguably the best track here is ‘I’m Too Much‘, a glam rock stomper that is simply joyful. In fact, thinking about it, the entirety of White Heat sends me right back to my days jamming and playing/writing newly written songs in recording studios that dripped with sweat and grime, when you could smell the marijuana wafting in from the band in the room next door. It’s made me quite misty-eyed, to tell the truth. The memory, I mean, not the marijuana.

‘Shut Your Mouth‘ sees the band deeply rooted in the hard rock genre, while ‘City Of Rain‘ recalls the indie guitar bands of the late eighties and early nineties. And Thin Lizzy. So they’re definitely not short on ideas. The only criticism I can really give is that sometimes it just feels like Rossi is merely singing the words of a lyric sheet rather than ‘living’ them. Having said that, on ‘Love Inside‘ the emotion feels real, and it really is a quite lovely song.

‘Blink Of An Eye‘ seems to borrow the guitar motif from Eric Clapton‘s ‘Wonderful Tonight‘ but speeds it up into a rockier number. Against all the odds, that does actually work far better than it has any right to. Then ‘Save Me‘ concludes the album and surprises us all with a soulful, bluesy number that wouldn’t have been out of place on a long player by The Animals or even Procol Harum.