Inglorious - Ride To Nowhere: An album forged amid personal tragedy

It was apt that Inglorious held the launch party for their third album at Sixty Sixty Sounds on Denmark Street.

The shop fronts represent a by-gone era. An era when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, and baby-boomer musicians such as Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck would've been regular visitors to the stores that now lie hauntingly empty. An era in which Inglorious would have fitted so seamlessly.

A shop just a few doors down from Sixty Sixty Sounds has been stripped of its interior and wallpaper, revealing the original, perfectly preserved, newspaper under layer. From the pictures of the Yardbirds, Rolling Stones and the like on the yellowed paper, you can deduce this corner of Denmark Street would have been a hive of adolescence bedecked in flowery shirts and flares circa 1965.

For the duration of the evening, Sixty Sixty Sounds became a time capsule back to those glorious days. Vibrant, colourful, expensive guitars adorn every inch of both walls and the street facing window, providing a stark contrast to the dark, deeply emotional context of how Ride To Nowhere came to be. As I found out when I asked lead singer Nathan James how the sound of the band had developed from the first two albums:

"I lost my Grand Father and one of my best friends in a month just before we went into the studio last year. It totally changed me as a writer: really changed me."

What resulted from such heartbreak was a consciously heavier sound:

"Not only musically: that's lyrically; that's feeling; everything in the production is much heavier. We also wanted it to sound a bit more gritty, and we've definitely done that."

Nathan had written a lot of the songs on I and II from a passive perspective, but that completely changed for Ride To Nowhere: "I usually write about other people in my life: about other people's relationships; I wrote a song about my brother and his girlfriend; about my Grandad and my Grandma; about my step-Grandad who I really dislike; and all sorts of characters who you meet; people you've worked with.

"I never imagined myself being that open [on Ride To Nowhere]. From my point of view as the lyricist, I wrote about things I never thought I'd write about. And this time round I wrote a lot more about my feelings."

Where I and II leaned heavily on headbanging riffs and groovy rhythms- songs that would grab attention on the radio and at festivals - Ride To Nowhere exhibits a much more well-rounded repertoire of songwriting; from the desperately sad I Don't Know You, grief-stricken Never Alone, fierce anger of Liar, to the beautiful melodic masterpiece that is the album closer, Glory Days.

That's doesn't mean Inglorious have sacrificed riffs though. Opener Where Are You Now, Time To Go and While She Sleeps will more than satisfy if that's what you're after.

Bragging rights, though, go to the title track, Ride To Nowhere. It totally encapsulates what Inglorious are; groovy, raw, thumping, unapologetic rock n roll. We haven't heard this good a song on either of the first two records, but you can hear echoes of the tracks that have brought them to this point - the groovy sway of Black Magic [II] and the soulful vocal from Holy Water [I].

As I leave Sixty Sixty Sounds, and Denmark Street, it's around 10:30pm. I walk back past the same derelict shop front I saw a few hours earlier - what many may consider a symbol of the current state of the British rock scene - and can't help feeling we're on the precipice of something huge. Something the artists who created rock n roll can be proud of. As long as Inglorious and bands like them exist, rock ain't dead.