"Our nation's most superb rock-qua-rock label, In The Red, has a pair of new foot-long stand-outs. The eponymous debut by SoCal trio, The Lamps, is in the classic ITR stylee. This means it investigates the connections between the Electric Eels, The Cramps, Harry Pussy and the Hunches. And sure, the lines-of-descent are clear to anyone who knows how to look for them, but so few do! Anyway, the Lamps disgorge raw chunks of elemental blat, deeply distorted on a whole lotta levels, and are aggressively trebly as hell. It's a keeper."
Bull Tongue, Arthur Magazine
"Making good rawk isn’t just about mass and velocity. A healthy dose of jab-yourself-in-the-eye absurdity—unrelated to the knowing, NPR-caliber quirkiness that personifies so much current pop culture—can make an intense band that much more memorable. So it’s a minor mystery that the name Lamps isn’t seen on more (any?) T-shirts around the LES and Brooklyn. Perhaps it’s just provincial distrust of the trio’s L.A. address, because Lamps’ raw second album roars and veers like a drunk with a chain saw. While having a frontman named Monty Buckles and surrounding a song called “Fred Astaire” with ones titled “Anvil” and “Javelin” displays some barbed inanity, ultimate proof of this group’s superiority lies in the pounding “Poolfish”: After a storm of guitar shards blasts away any semblance of the tune, the rhythm section calmly reenters, swinging like veteran badasses."
Mike Wolfe, Time Out New York
****
"For some having a frontman named Monty Buckles should be enough to denote greatness in a band. For those who need more convincing, rest assured the manic punk noise of the Lamps' second album more then delivers the goods. A lesson in raw, riff-driven simplicity, they nail a scuzzy-transistor guitar sound to a single-minded 4/4 stomp with all the enthusiasm of cavemen re-inventing the wheel before the aformentioned Mr. Buckles bends everything out of shape, hollering his throat out like a man possessed. At time echoing the staccato attack of The Fall, the Lamps melee also trades blows with Flipper, The Electric Eels, God Bullies and The Cramps, all while injecting the proceedings with enough fresh dementia to stand tall in its own right."
Andrew Cardin, Mojo
