This is a review of "Ignite" recorded by Naked Flames. The review was written by Simon Glacken in 2004.

You can't help but wonder what kind of band would have an album cover featuring a naked woman being mounted by a giant scorpion. Spinal Tap maybe? Anyway when you then open the case you are greeted with a CD with a picture of some human, scorpion, crab baby on it. Strange.

Leading track "Wildfire" opens the album with slow bluesy riffage and trippy guitar playing. Initial hopes are this is going to be some drug fuelled stoner rock Odyssey. Sadly though the song immediately turns into crappy student punk rock. The kind of band that play in an unknown local pub which is packed full of war veterans who have no idea why this band are here and pay little or no attention to them.

Instrumental track "Dance in Flames" is one of the more brighter points of the album. A kind of rock jam session which features none of the poor vocals that linger heavily on the rest of the album.

The rest of the CD comprises of either empty, bovine and dull acoustic filled music, that drags on for what seems like an eternity, or punk songs that come across as cheap Bad Religion covers without any of their political back bone.

Only on "Fly by Night" do things seem to pick up. For exactly 11 seconds there's the sound of dark, low humming strings. The potential for a huge build up into an explosion of rock. Sadly though on the twelfth second the acoustic guitar slips in and like the majority of tracks on the album it's down hill from there.

Standing at fifty six minutes in length this was four minutes short of being the most painful musical hour of my life.