Album Review
Eater
Duplication
CD/DL/Vinyl
Preorder now for release 31 October 2025
Andy Blade and his 21st Century line-up of Eater release an album of 1976/77 cover versions and it is an utterly brilliant encapsulation of everything Punk Rock was about in the mind of a teenage boy in ’77. AI could never replicate this, as it has no concept of the joy of cheap speed and blow-jobs, says Ged Babey.
This is the album Andy Blade swore he would never make.
A back-to-basics, amphetamine rock’n’roll collection that captures the thrill of teenage dreams/kicks/treats.
Ten songs in less than 30 minutes. ’77 classics all; Breakdown/Your Generation/Beat On The Brat/Outside View/I’m Stranded/God Save The Queen/White Riot/Chinese Rocks/New Rose/Another Girl, Another Planet. All hammered out by a bunch of young musicians who know their chops. (Jo-Jo & the Teeth moonlighting) With Blade in his now trademark baseball cap and shades, sneering and slurring the lyrics with suitable venomous glee.
It’s an utterly fantastic, pure ramalama punk rock album for purists – just don’t expect the reinvention of the metaphorical wheel – just expect to imagine you can taste the sulphate in the back of your throat and a feel a girl (or boy) fumbling with your flies… yeah, embrace the authenticity, the real-deal. Young, loud & snotty punk rock. Revisited.
I wandered loaded as a crowd a nowherewolf of pain…
Of the ten songs there’s only one that was a bit of a shit choice to my mind: White Riot. Any other early Clash song would’ve been preferable.
“The tracks on Duplication are essentially my favourite songs out of the seminal punk classics,” explains Blade, “before punk rock became somewhat homogenized as a formula. Whilst it is a covers album – it is not just a covers album. There is a difference because I was ‘there’ with my band during the explosive year of 1977 – these songs mean something to me in a visceral sense. There’s a spirit to the tracks that seems to come alive as we rehearsed them. Most importantly, however, Duplication was great fun to create and I think, as a result, it is – I hope – great fun to listen to.”
It really is. Jo-Jo on backing vocals giving little operatic trills, squeals and holding the notes complementing Blades doubletracked sneer and slur and making the whole thing sound more distinctive and even better.
Musically songs like Stranded, Chinese Rocks and Another Girl get the solo’s spot on and the high-end bass-playing marks out proper musicianship amongst the thrash. The drumming is great throughout except when it gets to New Rose because no-one can hammer that out quite like Scabies.
“Breakdown” takes us all back to a very specific time and place, to the night in November 1976 when Eater played their first gig with Buzzcocks.
“Breakdown,” says Blade, “was a song that stuck in my head immediately. I loved its jerky delivery and lyric-spitting vibe and the fact it was so short. There was a lyric sheet of the song in the dressing room that I sneaked a look at. ‘These aren’t song lyrics,’ I thought – ‘this is a fucking essay!” – it had so many hard to scan, extra length verses with long words/phrases I’d never heard before at just 15 years old.
“I thought – ‘Now I understand what the essence of punk rock is – super fast, but also intelligent’.”
Eater 2025 master the dumbness of the Ramones with equal aplomb.
Chinese Rocks and Another Girl Another Planet are sacred songs which should never really be sung by anyone other than Thunders and Perrett respectively – but Blade is qualified and able to carry them off with the necessary respect and recklessness required.
New Rose he adapts to his own vocal style with the aid of some trickery which echoes and delays the sharp stab of Vanians ‘Wah!’ into eleven seconds of reverberations.
Andy deliberately cocks up vital lyrics just to annoy the punk trainspotters and gate-keepers and because he can, true to form.
Duplication would be in Vive Le Rocks Top albums of the year without a doubt had Blade not wound-up the magazines editor big-style.
Blade has a great new solo album out soon too and another book early next year…
And if cynics wail cash-in and sell-out, off they can fuck, because Eater started their existence doing covers of the Velvets, Bowie and Alice Cooper so they are just doing what they’ve always done…. putting the punk attitude into maximum rock-and-roll and undoing the intellectualisation, contextualisation, mummification and museumification of punk rock.
This is a fun album.
The LAST, great punk rock album. Maybe.
All words Ged Babey with press release content in italics
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