Finally turned up yesterday! On fourth listen to it now & really, really impressed overall. Captain Plastic, Seek & Destroy & Wasted are favourites so far. So much of the VLVE stuff has come on & really sounds complete with the full band and Mary onboard, eg. Seek and Destroy was good but lost its way on VLVE, the NNDBAS version has so much more punch and I love the return of trademark PWEI tag team vocals
Only gripes are production is a bit varied, still not a fan of the guitar sound on Chaos & Mayhem although the tune is growing on me, and some of the vocals get lost in the mix. Also Mask is a bit of a duffer, it's got some good ideas in there but never really takes off and is about 2 minutes too long. I'd rather it had been substituted out for Every Day is a World War. On the Equal Zero/ Retro Dreaming debate, I think Retro Dreaming was one of the few VE tunes that was near perfect & the new version whist a great tune doesn't quite hit the heights of the original.
Overall though a very strong comeback, so much better than I could have imagined when the new project was announced. This is definitely a Pop Will Eat Itself lp, Crabbi you've done us proud