Time Wounds All Heels - Rolling Stone{Aus} April '96 - Murray Engleheart

Recordings by Melbourne's Powder Monkeys are like prison tattoos and stories: the sort of stuff you wouldn't want anyone you cared for to live through. the music is all chipped knuckles and stitched up souls with an all consuming sense that blind revenge is the only thing in life that really makes any sense. It's grainy, black and white Cape Fear-punk. The band's last album, Smashed on a Knee , had the rhetoric right and for the most part the reach to back it up . But Time Wounds all Heels puts the Powder Monkeys on a level with the Eastern Dark, the Saints , Radio Birdman and precious few others.

   The opening Tyson-like pummelling of " In The Doldrums" and "Insane Old Game" alone provides ample testimony of the Powder Monkeys power. Any correlation between the trio and Motorhead has more to do with paralleling bull-throated vocalist and bassist Tim Hemensley with Lemmy than anything else. There's no "Hoochie Coochie Man"  or Orgasmatron bravado here.

                        But that's not to say that there isn't a form of tradition at  work. There was a point in Rose Tattoo's career between the Assault and Battery and Scarred For Life albums when they  seemed to be dealing with something infinitely more lethal on every level than just badboy boogie. The Powder Monkeys are upholing that particular area of  Oz rock. And no-one is doing it quite like them. But that's  not really surprising. They are, after all, in the words of Hunter S Thompson, professionals.