Sometimes, you’ll listen to some music that you don’t like at first, but later do. Sometimes, you’ll listen to some music that you might even hate at first, but eventually learn to love, or at least not mind too much. Sometimes, however, you’ll listen to some music that you not only hate instantly, but that would make you scratch open your wrists with rusty nails and vomit into the wounds rather than be subjected to it again. Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood by Danish rockers Volbeat is one such aural cesspit.

Having been to – and had a great time at – Denmark’s Roskilde festival a couple of years ago, I was recommended by at least one of the locals to make sure that I saw Volbeat. I was implored by at least as many others to avoid them at all costs. This polarising of opinions intrigued me but, alas, goodness knows how many crates of Tuborg saw to it that I never remembered to see them in the end. Well, now I can count my blessings.

Unless someone makes a Spinal Tap/Anvil-esque rockumentary about Volbeat, then no good could possibly come of them. For those are the two bands that spring immediately to mind the moment the primitive two-chord chugging of the title track kicks in, following on from an utterly pointless acoustic blues intro which proclaims ‘genre exercise’ so boldly that you could imagine it sweating buckets on a treadmill.

As musicians, they are proficient, but only in the sense that bombs are quite good at blowing people to bits, or that Nickleback are excellent at inspiring feelings of profound hatred. Even some quirky song titles – Hallelujah Goat, anyone? – can’t save this one.

Maybe I’m missing some kind of hilarious joke here, but I suspect not. Anyone who actually listens to this stuff is wasting their time to the point of tragedy. At a push, Maybellene I Hofteholder has a semblance of melody but, hey, if a thousand moronic bands were given a thousand guitars and left for a thousand years, they’d hit upon something semi-decent at some point.

Buy this album for someone you really hate.