SUCH is the buzz currently surrounding this Manchester-based mob, I was keenly looking forward to hearing this album, but what an almighty letdown it proved to be.

Reading the music press lately, you could be forgiven for thinking that Amplifier are rock music's great white hope.

In fact, they are a pompous, ponderous bunch of dirge merchants, whose grim and seemingly endless slices of sonic monotony have dented my confidence in guitar music.

Seriously, I won't be happy until every copy of this album has been rounded up, placed across a motorway, and run over by a fleet of 18-wheeler vehicles.

The disappointment begins straight away, when opening track Motorhead proves to be not a cover of Lemmy's rock classic, but a downbeat chugger composed - like every other song on here - by singer and guitarist Sel Balamir.

From there, it only gets worse. Track two, Airborne, takes eight-and-a-half minutes to go precisely nowhere. Eight-and-a-half minutes! I mean, what the hell is this, 1972?

The rest of the songs come and go, none of them standing out. Except, that is, for two pretentious instrumentals, Drawing No.1 and Drawing No.2, which are even duller than the others. And that, believe me, is no mean feat.

By the time the final track, UFOs, had washed over me, I could only sit there in stunned silence, questioning my core musical beliefs. How could guitar music ever be this bad?

It's been a long time since I felt such complete and utter contempt for an album.