Doing away with demons and the devil, mighty West Midlands rockers Fury return to more familiar territory of fast cars and celebrating rock n roll with their down and dirty new album.
Titled Interceptor, after The Jensen Interceptor, the coolest car ever produced in the UK, this is the second album where Julian Jenkins and Nyah Ifill share vocals, but here Nyah takes a more prominent role, taking the lead on a number of tracks, her soulful, powerhouse performances add a new dimension to Fury in the studio and live on stage, weaving with and countering the husky tones of burly crooner Julian vocally, to create a wall of sound that vocally embraces big choruses.
The first full lead vocals she gets here is the anthemic, empowering What's It Going To Be? A precursor single and the perfect cut for Nyah to shine on as it's a big, bold anthem telling of fighting for what you want as it will come to fruition with enough work, from here the gas pedal goes back done for On The Town where the band again show off those dual vocals with an ode to the road that reminds me of Meatloaf and Cher's Dead Ringer For Love.
Jenkins, the only original member of the band, cranks out the riffs with bass extraordinaire Becky Baldwin driving the rhythms with the four string ferocity that landed her a place in legends Mercyful Fate. In between tours with the Danish metal veterans the band decamped to Welsh Wales with Todd Campbell (Phil Campbell And The Bastard Sons) to record this new album, the experience of Todd (a bassist himself) in PCATBS and the affinity Becky and the others have to Motörhead and Lemmy, leading to a match made rock n roll heaven.
Todd gives plenty of room to all the instruments, it's loud and dirty that Rickenbacker bass locking down the bottom end as human drum machine Tom Fenn pairs technical precision with brute force, as they kick off with the title track your pulled in to world of Fury, Fenn double kicking away while the riffs come at Top Gear from Jenkins and Baldwin. The chorus showcasing those dual vocals perfectly while Tom Atkinson, who makes his recorded debut on Interceptor, rips up the fretboard on lead guitar.
It's the encapsulation of modern day Fury, the move towards hard rock over the thrashier realms of their early stuff, sculpted by their constant touring, in recent years paying dividends as they move higher and higher up the bill. What I always find about Fury, which has made me a bit of a fan boy if I'm honest, is that the songs seem simple, but they aren't, if you listen past the catchy choruses and fist in the air riffs there lots of nuance, for example during a bit of an extremely groovy middle eight in Interceptor there's a "haha heh" ala Genesis' Mama just below the surface, before we accelerate into the dual Maiden solos.
On the whole Fury are about impact, getting in and getting out as quickly and as loudly as they can, the progressive tendencies of Lost In Space now focussed into anthemic rock n roll, that being said, with Interceptor they have dug a little deeper lyrically, showcasing who they are and what they believe as a band. Whether that will prove controversial to the fans who just want rock songs about cars, devils and rock n roll itself remains to be scene but I think any band with four albums under their belt and their most cohesive line up yet should be able to show more of their personality.
For example Can't Resist (Gimmie What I Need) is a musing on misogyny and toxic male behaviour dressed up as a bro metal song from the 80's, I guess you could subtitle it *the problem with Ratt* as it's got many of the musical hallmarks of that era, such as the backing vocals, big choruses the lustful lyrics but is put through a gaze of all that being sleazy and generally not ok in 2025.
With Don't Lie To Me they rally against the constant deluge of false information that we are exposed to through the media, politicians and so many keyboard warriors on the internet. If you think Fury singing about healthcare, redistributing the wealth and revolution makes them snowflakes or some other garbage, then you haven't been paying attention. They have ideologies based on their multicultural backgrounds and the fact that they are all decent human beings and with this fifth album they want to make a point with their music. Don't like it? Go paint a roundabout!
Anyway back to rocking and In Pursuit Of Destiny brings back the anthemic qualities anyone can sing along to and they definitely can sing along as those prog influences pop back to say hello with some power metal too. On Walk Away however they journey toward the Old West with a atmospheric country/Southern rock influenced number revolving around loss, second chances and resilience. While there's more play off vocals and some 80's hard rocking on DTR.
Undistilled meanwhile is a song that's well composed and rather different from much of the Fury discography, there's a lot of Gary Moore in the beginning with some Great Gig In The Sky vocalising from Nyah and an influence from Faithless as crazy as that sounds, (though this was confirmed by frontman JJ), the switch in pace makes it a proper closing track, building and building into a similar thrust as G’N’R do at the end of November Rain, Undistilled executed with a similar bombast.
These influences that Fury showcase on this record that as soon I had listened to once just clicked, it feels like a band right on the cusp of that next leap in their career, able to knock out propulsive rock songs such as Look At Us Now but also experiment with their flavouring a little with more personal lyrics, some different styles but never betraying the sound that they've meticulously crafted over the years with thousands of live shows.
Throughout my years as a fan of music, I've become smitten with many bands and one of them is Fury, they're one of the most honest, hardworking, heavy rocking acts on the UK scene and deserve all the plaudits they get. With Interceptor they've made an album that puts the spotlight on who they are in 2025, ready to conquer the world for rock n roll!
Make sure to catch them on their tour this year as they won't be playing venues this size for long, Interceptor, like the car that it shares its name with, is destined to be a future classic. 10/10
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