This is a review of "Hello Venus!" recorded by The Alamo. The review was written by Sam Saunders in 2003.

It's fresh, it's loud. It's the Alamo. Four bars, four beats, four songs, four kids. And they're doing a great enthusiastic blast of natural rock with no frills and no attempt to imitate anyone except themselves.

"Best of Me" crashes in with two big power chords for the verse, and two for the chorus. Adam Sweeney sings like he means it and the band keep it straight and simple.

"Losing Out" has that repressed kind of Teenage Kicks damped guitar for the first verse, and builds neatly and economically in a great bass line assault (nice one Holly Brown) and no-shit drum pounding from the animal (Sean Langan). This has real pop simplicity and a stinging guitar underneath it all. Top track. Maybe without knowing it, they put the rhythm at the heart of the song and kept it screaming along the rails from start to finish.

Undertones theme nite continues (In this idiot reviewer’s ears, anyway) with the first bars of "Wrong Time", which turns out to have a few more words than it needs. But it does the keep the plot with some big pounding floor toms in the instrumental section. (love that bit) The guitar solo loses the plot. But what the hell, they can pay Jimmy Page to do that part on the album.

Slightly dodgy seriousness rears its head in "Spotlight". But never fear - the drumming massive appears after sixty seconds and the faith is kept. The slower stuff might not be what the Alamo do best right now - the punky stuff goes better than the soulful metal.

With this first self-produced CD the Alamo have made a categorical statement of intent. They're here, and with no apologies, no excuses, they're going to blast their way into your life. It's basic, it's ballsy and it's totally honest. Good on ‘em.