Why don't the unbridled forces of evil want us to review this new release from The Humour here at Über Röck?

The first promo disc that turned up at ÜRHQ wouldn't play properly - sounded like Geddy Lee had violated R2-D2, recorded the nefarious act on a cheap children's cassette recorder from the 1980's, drowned the tape, contacted it via the supernatural gift of a séance, recorded the fake otherwordly voices of the old dear hosting said séance in her front room, played it backwards while pissing on it and then bunged it on a scratched disc covered in crud. Long story short - sounded awful.

So I set my typing finger to stun, contacted the PR company, got another copy almost immediately (lovely people!) and sent it off to an über-reviewer....who didn't receive it! Why was this obvious Humour hatred haunting us? Okay, the situation gave me the chance to use the cheesy "lacking a sense of humour" line but, c'mon, I'm waaay too cool to use that tacky shite...ahem.

It was obvious that I had to do that voodoo that I do to make the faulty disc work. How I did it remains a top class über-secret....but I did. Gawd help this band if the tunes are shit after all that hassle. Thankfully, they aren't. In fact they are the opposite of shit - not shit.

The Humour appear to have several massive positives working in their favour. Firstly, they have the ability to write insanely catchy tunes. Secondly, they are blessed with a great vocalist. Sometimes that's enough. Just in case, they pull out their joker; the ability to cross genres with the resulting effect similar to what would happen if two Ghostbusters crossed streams - total protonic reversal! Shit, that's not right. Let's bend the rules a little - popularity explosion!

The band have one Draven-clad foot in modern melodic pop rock territories and one monkey booted foot in the past. I hear the band A in the mix (especially on opener 'You're Gonna Pay'), Head Automatica at times too. Could the fans that have made that scruffy bugger from Kids In Glass Houses a sex symbol take to The Humour? Why not?! There is a definite 80's pop aesthetic in the veins of these songs - intentional or not - but also a modern commercialism that could see them wiping the floor with bands like Madina Lake et al.

There are plenty of things in this world that can work against cool young bands and, sadly, many times these things succeed in killing ambition. Can The Humour overcome these obstacles and kick mass ass? I'm rooting for them and so should you.

www.myspace.com/thehumour