Mecha-ChugZilla EP Review

I was 40 years old when I finally met someone with the same first name as me. He was the piper at a Burns Supper I was at. And when you have a rare name, it makes it very easy for people to look you up online and get your details. The reason I’m telling you this is because Mecha-ChugZilla hail from Livingston in West Lothian, which is roughly ten miles from where I live, and they don’t look like the sort of people you’d want at your door. So this review was only ever going to go one way. 

Luckily for me, the Mecha-ChugZilla EP is 18 minutes of headbangers delight – pounding drums, heavy bass, riffs that sting and lyrics that are only half-intelligible so you need to listen multiple times to get the full message. Which isn’t an issue as this record deserves multiple listens. “You’re a failure… a f***ing waste of space!’ frontman Chris growls (I think) on EP opener ‘Failure’, over a cacophony of runaway trains that could soundtrack any of the chase scenes in Terminator 2. 

I’m also partial to bands that have the indecency to name a song after their own band, which makes me love this lot even more. “The army tried to kill him but they failed… I want to take him back home, it’s Mecha-ChugZilla’. Even if that’s not what the lyrics are, that’s what I heard, and isn’t that the most important thing? 

The band added the ‘Mecha’ to their name earlier this year, and this extra metal can be found in ‘Backstabber’ and EP closer ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’, which might be the weakest song here but lies in the wake of three such brazen beasts of tracks that it may need a solo outing later to appreciate it. 

Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield… ok, you won’t find Livingston on anyone’s list of British musical pilgrimages, but Mecha-ChugZilla are a lot of fun and, if you’re lucky, will be raising your town to the ground soon.