The final album from a legendary Punk original
Released 49 years ago, ‘Damned Damned Damned‘ was Brian James’s vision. His songs brought to life by an unpracticed band he’d put together with drummer Rat Scabies. An unabashed fan of garage rock, Delta blues, The Stones, The Stooges, Pink Fairies and MC5, James shrugged off the punk tag from the start, despite that feeling he had inside of him. But in shaping, recording with, and quitting The Damned in less than two years, he was its epitome.
James didn’t stop there. He formed the short-lived Tanz Der Youth, toured with Iggy Pop, co-founded Lords of the New Church with Stiv Bators, played with the Dripping Lips, recorded with Racketeers, did the Brian James Gang – the list goes on.
Despite battling illness in recent years, James stayed busy. He managed a final reunion tour with The Damned in 2022 and a couple of shows with a reconstituted Lords of the New Church, as well as writing and recording ‘Kicks And Diabolik Licks‘.
Working with bassist/engineer Austen Gayton and drummers Malcolm Mortimore, Dave ‘Caveman’ O’Brien and Steve Murray, Dirty Strangers’ frontman Alan Clayton handles backing vocals while ex-Mo-dettes singer Ramona Wilkins Carlier takes the lead on a very different version of The Lords’ hit ‘Dance With Me‘.
Brian James died in March 2025, soon after completing this record. I say ‘completing’, some songs sound like sketches, but there’s great stuff here in a similar vein to ‘The Guitar That Dripped Blood‘, which James released in 2015 and hailed as ‘the son of the first Damned album’. Certainly, ‘Kicks And Diabolik Licks‘ is no Blackstar confessional/new direction.
Inspired by James’ love of Italian culture, the album takes its title from Angela and Luciana Giussani’s comic anti-hero ‘Diabolik’ and a couple of tracks draw inspiration from the ‘Giallo’ movie genre, think violent film noir-style.
Reading that ‘Kicks And Diabolik Licks‘ contains just seven songs, I assumed there would be an elongated ‘odyssey’ of some sort to make the weight. Or that the sand simply ran out on Brian James. Wrong on both counts. No song lasts more than five minutes and, while there is a rare nod to James’s jazz journey, it’s much more Ron Asheton and Wayne Kramer than it is John Coltrane or Charlie Mingus. The vocals might be down in the mix but the guitar, the rhythms, are every bit as urgent as its predecessor.
Fittingly, an emblematic riff opens the record and while it’s hard to catch the lyric, ‘In The Blood‘ embodies James’ debt to The Stooges:
‘Soho‘ is a song of several parts. It starts like The Stones working out ‘As Tears Go By‘ before an archetypal, almost ‘Wild Thing‘ riff kicks the door in. The noodling comes back midway ahead of a wonderful, chaotic ‘third movement’. ‘Fan Club‘ through a telescope held the wrong way round.
‘Giallo Yellow‘ is an almost ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog‘ guitar line – James even breaks his “Giallo yellow easy rider” lyric monotony with a “Well, come on” – before a Fish-like frenzy breaks out at the midpoint. Like someone asked him, “What do you do?” “This. Is. What. I. Fucking. Do.” Some great keys too. It drops back at the end, “Giallo yellow easy rider”, but you’ve been on a journey.
The lyrics need some work, “Sonny don’t care, just grew his hair”, but give Dave Vanian the mic (before he became so crooner) and you could make a really good early incarnation Damned song out of ‘So Sad Sonny‘. Chatter in the background at the conclusion exposes its embryonic state, but ‘So Sad‘ still manages to smash into the buffers like ‘Suffragette City‘.
While for Brian James this record was wrapped at the beginning of 2025, in fact Ramona Wilkins Carlier re-recorded her vocal on ‘Dance With Me‘ after he died. The funky bass and drum programme from the Lords of the New Church original is replaced by a simple rhythm and piano coupled with occasional flashes from James’s guitar, giving Wilkins Carlier‘s singing a perfect platform. It’s a properly finished song and one of my two key kicks among all these diabolik licks.
The other comes in the shape of ‘Ida Strong‘, which sets a big riff against a vibrato keyboard – Marc Bolan meets Suicide – teeing up a squalling lead guitar finish. Fabulous. ‘Kicks And Diabolik Licks‘ finishes with ‘Happy Families’, a song that morphs from Brian James drowning out a Moondance-esque piano to the closest he ever came to acknowledging his love of experimental jazz, or art jazz if there was such a thing. It’s playful, freeform, zombie indulgence. And why not? Famous for his good humour, Brian James even manages a nod to track 1 side 1 of ‘Damned Damned Damned‘ on Kicks’ closing song – “Zombies want meat meat meat.”
So, there it is, Brian James‘s final studio album. As he would say, “You want some action, then… yeah?”
‘Kicks And Diabolik Licks‘ is out on Easy Action Records on 20th Feb 2026 – order on vinyl HERE and on CD HERE
Main Photo Credit: CRIS WATKINS
- In The Blood
- Soho
- Giallo Yellow
- So Sad Sonny
- Dance With Me
- Ida Strong
- Happy Families (aka ‘Zombie Song’)
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