The follow up to “Savage…” and it was very much the lovely red vinyl Indie store exclusive that convinced me to buy it. It’s not a bad record, there are good songs in here, my only quibble would be that it really is part 2 of its predecessor, you could put almost any of these songs on “Savage…”, and vice versa, and they wouldn’t be too out of place

Again it’s a concept album with the premise being the Earth has had enough of humanity (some days I know how it feels). Numan explained “Essentially, it [Earth] considers humankind to be a virus attacking the planet. Climate change is the undeniable sign of the Earth saying enough is enough, and finally doing what it needs to do to get rid of us, and explaining why it feels it has to do it “…cheery huh ? The original idea came from a poem written by his daughter Echo and two more of his daughters, Raven and Persia, sing backing vocals on the album.

The song titles start to tell the story “Betrayed”, “I Am Screaming”, “Is This World Not Enough”, “And It Breaks Me Again”. Thematically it’s a direct follow on from “Savage…” whose post apocalyptic setting is now causing the planet to bite back. If you play the two records back to back, which I often do in the shop, they are two halves of the same idea. But here on “Intruder” those big “Savage…” metal guitars are buried much further back in the mix (even though both records were mixed by the same people) which gives the overall sound less punch to my ears. I’m not saying this is a bad record, I really do like it, but I think the difference might be that this one just doesn’t have the quality of songs that “Savage…” has. 

If you have any knowledge of Gary Numan over the years then you know what you’re getting here. Yes the influence of Berlin era Bowie, and John Foxx’s Ultravox! hangs heavy over what he does but it’s not done in a plagiaristic way, Gary knows where he’s coming from and he’s doing alright at it thank you. If you like it, you like it, if not there’ll always be something else along reet soon.

And It Breaks Me Again - https://youtu.be/Gd7dsGwkUzU?si=TBz7pKjWHVwWMNgf