The ’90s children amongst you might remember in the back of your minds a Saturday night programme from about fifteen years ago called “Last Chance Lottery”. Presented by grinning berk Patrick Kielty, it was a sort of variety gameshow where people who’d had some sort of bad luck in real life (for example forgetting to fill their lottery ticket in and then the numbers coming up) would have a chance to redeem themselves and get a prize via various wacky gameshow games. Then there’d be a musical number (usually an implausible cover version) from Ash or Supergrass or someone like that (I seem to remember even seeing Captain Sensible on it once) and everyone would (hopefully) go home smiling.
Now, why am I mentioning this here you might ask. Well, JD and the FDC’s are very much the premise of that old gameshow made musical flesh. With a shared musical history taking in Teenage Casket Co, the Dangerfields, Patchwork Grace and DiP, this is very much a second chance to forge out a new beginning following their previous musical ventures.
And I’m happy to say, they’ve succeeded. The opening one-two of the title track and “Ujpest Dosza” barrels out of the traps like prime time Rocket From The Crypt with a snotty punk energy backed up by powerhouse riffs and it’s clear that these guys have put their past experience to good use to come up with a competent and varied effort.
There’s an impressive guest list here including Richard “D-Gen” Bacchus, Acey Slade, Dez “Black Flag” Cadena, Amy Dumas (aka Lita from the WWE), even JD’s former bandmate and all-round “bassist of a thousand bands” Laney pops up for a satisfyingly crunchy reworking of TCC’s “Mirrors And Wires” but none of that would mean owt without the tunes to back it up and happily, tunes is something that the FDC’s have in spades. “Burn This City Down” wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a ’90s Wildhearts album, “From The Shadows” sounds like Avenged Sevenfold with the prog tendencies replaced by punk attitude and “This Town Of Infamy” is a poisoned acoustic-driven punk sea shanty which could almost be the Urban Voodoo Machine if you squint a bit. Covers of D-Generation’s “No Way Out” and Kelly Osbourne’s “Come Dig Me Out” are handled competently and all in all this one pretty much ticks all the boxes on the “good album” checklist.
Yup, this may be a Last Chance Lottery but the FDC’s have comprehensively hit the jackpot with it. If anything, this could be the start of something very big for these Nottingham upstarts.
