Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

AD Ozium – Body Without Organs

Posted: 14 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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15th October 2026

AD Ozium is the musical vehicle for multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Moore, based in Washington DC – a vehicle for what he describes as ‘a fractured, hallucinatory convergence of freak folk textures, dark ambient, and no wave dissonance.’ That’s a lot to digest, just on paper. What’s more, this second album, which follows just four months after In The Style Of Dead Sparrows, ‘confronts themes of dehumanization, economic exploitation,

revenge, and systemic collapse. It argues that dehumanization functions as a gateway to sustained, trans-generational cruelty, and that societies built upon the denial of another’s humanity ultimately cultivate the conditions for their own destruction.’

That’s a pretty bleak proposal, but we live in bleak times – potentially the bleakest of all times. The last few decades have seen an ever-widening wealth gap. But the propensity for conspicuous consumption and status symbols which defines the 80s pale in comparison to where we are now. Billionaires simply didn’t exist then: now they’re a class. And instead of aspiring to owning yachts, these uber-rich fuckers – who each individually could eradicate world poverty and still be richer than anyone else can really conceive – choose to send rockets into space, not in the interest of expanding human knowledge, but in the sole interest of self-interest. Space travel is the Rolex and Hummer for the mid-2020s. Meanwhile, as we burn through ever diminishing supplies of fossil fuels at an ever-increasing rate and the seas are rising more quickly than ever, it feels like we’re accelerating towards a cliff that has no bottom, just an abyss of incomprehensible proportions.

We live in a sick society, with an ageing population. And it’s that ageing population who seem determined to ruin any possible future for future generations. What the fuck happened? Where is the humanity? What happened to the adage ‘you can’t take it with you’? Now, it seems that the mega-wealthy and the boomers – I refuse to use to term ‘elites’ here, because they have no claim to superiority – have set a course for total annihilation and are determined to take the rest of us with them.

So yes, I feel passionately about the positioning of this album. And the fact it’s landed so soon after its predecessor indicates a sense of urgency where Moore is concerned. There’s a palpable sense that he’s doing this because he feels driven, is motivated by a compulsion to act in the only way he knows, the only way he can control.

The title, Body Without Organs hints at a deep-seated sense of detachment, and this translates into the sonic experience: as I said, it’s a lot to digest just on paper. As a listening experience… well, it does feel like the slow – but rapidly accelerating – end of everything. A stentorious baritone vocal rings out through a clamorous clatter of churning discord on the album’s second track, ‘Acceleration’, on which, contradictorily, time slows to a doomy crawl. One might call it industrial goth, or gothic industrial: it’s dark and has all the hallmarks of sepulchral drama, against a dingy backdrop or gnarly metal-griding and wailing moorland wintering ambient noise. Moore sounds as if he’s lost and wandering, not just in a barren landscape / soundscape, but in a psychological desert. New sonic ruptures burst unexpectedly, only adding to the sense of discomfort.

‘Thug Bait’ is a dirgy, purgatorial crawl through subterranean depths: the vocals are low in the mix and swathed in reverb, swimming through a dank swamp, dense enough to drown in.

The production values are positively black metal: Body Without Organs sounds like it as recorded on a Walkman positioned in the room next door on a well-used tape. But it wouldn’t work any other way. The heavy, soul-dragging atmosphere, which is so integral to the experience, simply couldn’t come from a nice clean, crisp recording made in a plush digital studio. ‘Curse of 39’ is a particularly woozy, abstract piece, whereby Moore’s vocals float amidst a slow drift of slow-building tide of flotsam and debris, and ‘Space of Flows’ is a fractured, dissonant wail. And the debris is strewn across this album – the debris and wreckage of human existence. Body Without Organs is the sound societal collapse and the slow dawning of the reality of what this means.

Shit only gets weirder as the album progresses., with grinding earthworks and tectonic ruptures churning and dredging away, spun across slow-drifting sonic clouds and warping. There’s a mesh of static which drapes itself over ‘Capitulation’, while at the same time untuned guitars twang and unravel with a complete disregard for musicality or structure. ‘The Illusion of Completeness’ borders on the surreal, as guitars scrabble against notes like elastic bands and so much rumbling ambience and lurching noise. The seven-minute ‘Most Beloved’ is dark folk and quite nasty noise, and again, Moore’s voice floats around vampirically, like the very essence of of doom, to be afraid of.

The experience of listening to Body Without Organs is not an easy one: it slowly drags the listener down into murky waters and a troubled headspace, one where confusion and dissonance reign. It’s great, it’s powerful – but it’s probably not for everyone.

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Strange Pink / Flesh Planet / JUKU / The Bricks – The Fulford Arms, York, 11th October 2026

Posted: 13 October 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

I reckon I’ve probably said that both The Bricks and JUKU are my favourite current York band in the last couple of years. How can both things be true? Well, essentially because it’s too close to call. But that means that even without Strange Pink headlining, tonight’s lineup is guaranteed to be killer, one not to be missed. It also means that this is a face-off… who will win?

On the other side of town, GANS are playing at The Crescent. No doubt off the back of their supporting Pixies at The Barbican, they’ve won some new fans, but this is definitely the pick of the live action tonight, with four quality bands for a fiver – yes, a FIVER! – less than the price of a pint. It’s madness, particularly given that every act on the bill is individually worth way more than that.

The Bricks are headline quality on any night, and this is no exception. If I’m not mistaken, it’s been a couple of months since they’ve ventured out, and it seems that Gemma Kennedy has been building some pent-up energy and tension during that time, meaning that tonight, she’s on fire, not only with a commanding vocal performance, but a dominant stage presence, which sees her kick, lunge, stomp, and charge back and forth with barely a moment to breathe. They open with ‘Icarus’, and it’s clear from the very start that they’re on peak form – not that they have any other level of form, but tonight they seem to find an extra level. ‘Snake’ provides the slower segment after a new song which Gemma describes as their ‘indie’ song. ‘Modern Mirror’ powers home as a scratchy anti-AI anthem. She lines up the sheets with the lyrics to second new song, ‘Life Lesson’, where The Fall meets Hole. It’s mint – of course. But not a Polo, the mint with a hole – it’s definitely at least Extra Strong or XXX. Because they’re never anything less than awesome.

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The Bricks

A JUKU set feels like less of a gig than an event, and if we’re following the mint comparison, these guys are the Fisherman’s Friend mints of music. They don’t play frequently, but when they do… woah. What they do is full throttle rock ‘n’ roll, and they slam down riff after riff, a relentless riff machine, and while Naomi’s as cool and nonchalant as you like at the mic, Dan’s off in the back going full psycho Neanderthal, and the drummer and lead guitarist are just getting on with it, standing as if in the eye of a storm as a sonic maelstrom tears from the stage. The strolling swagger of ‘Hot Mess’ follows a blistering ‘What’ Penultimate song ‘Out of Control’ is straight up 90s grunge, but at 120 decibels and a hundred miles an hour. They’re not reinventing rock ‘n’ roll, by any means. But they are rediscovering the power of the volume control. Between them and The Bricks, my favourite York band remains a solid tie – but JUKU are by far the loudest York band, and they are an absolute rush.

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Juku

Where do you go from here? They’re not a band you’d want to Follow… unless you’re Flesh Planet. They’re kinda grunge, kinda noise rock, a bit industrial, and boast an immense bass sound… and an immense sound overall. The sound is dense and textured, and the arrangements are laced with synths which add depth and a certain smoothness, and it’s crisp and tight but with serrated edges. The bassist takes much of his inspiration from Lemmy, both sonically and visually. Cool: if you’re going to draw on influences, why not take your lessons from true legends? Here, we move from mints to wine-tasting analogies, because Flesh Planet offer a spicy blend that’s rich, dep, and dark, with hints of later Depeche Mode, Alice in Chains, NIN and Filter all in the mix The singer’s got a baggy, stretched, fluffy jumper and bleached hair, and clearly loves Kurt Cobain, but the vocals offer hints of Brian Molko when he’s not being screamy. But they’re so much more than an influence pic ‘n’ mix band. They’ve not only got some stomping tunes, but a tangible chemistry and a rare, raw energy. They’ve barely been going eighteen months, and shows like this should see them playing to substantially larger audiences in no time.

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Flesh Planet

And then there’s Strange Pink -featuring local(ish) legends Sam Forrest and Dom Smith. It’s been a fair while since the days of Nine Black Alps, but Forrest hasn’t been idle in the intervening years, currently fronting both noisy grunge duo Sewage Farm and Strange Pink, a quintessential grunge trio who take their cues from Sonic Youth and Nirvana. ‘Seventeen’ is a sad nostalgia song that brings the perfect balance of slackerism and the poppier end of Nirvana’s sound, and encapsulates everything that’s great about Strange Pink. As seasoned musicians, they understand the nature of the dynamic of the power trio, and the fact that there’s no space for a weak link or to carry anyone, and sure enough, they’re each on it, the sound driven by Dom’s powerhouse drumming. Holy hell, that man give it his all and then ten per cent. This is how it’s done.

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And to see four acts of this quality, where not only the standard but the energy – and the volume – is maintained throughout the night, is an intense experience.

The Battery Farm – Your House Looks Spooky

Posted: 12 October 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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9th October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Manchester’s finest self-labelled gutter punks, The Battery Farm are back with their first release in almost two years. Despite having only started out in 2019, ‘Your House Looks Spooky’ is their seventeenth single. There have been three albums in that time, too. Still, in the time away, they’ve regrouped, refocused, and penned another album: you could hardly accuse them of slacking, especially when the first taste of said forthcoming album lands in the form of such a ball-busting punk blast.

It’s only a fraction early for Halloween, but since the supermarkets have been flogging sweets, skeletons, and pumpkins since August bank holiday, the timing is probably about right, in fairness. And despite the title, and the cover art, it’s not actually a Halloween-themed song. As ever, there’s a lot happening here, both musically and lyrically. They describe it as ‘A song about punching down, judgement and the importance of good home décor’. Seemingly unrelated matters, but they spin them together nicely, pinned to a gut-shaking, snarling bass and piton-pumping drums, which provide the foundations for driving guitars and a gritty vocal delivery.

And when it comes to punching down, it seems to be the in-thing right now. Everything’s shit: that’s a fact, not an opinion. But right-wing opportunists are swooping on it and making capital by blaming migrants and the poor. Yeah, those asylum seekers who aren’t allowed to work, and are given a sustenance allowance of pennies a day while living in ‘accommodation’ which is practically a prison? Farage and Robinson and the like – moneyed grifters who are living it large on donations – whip up outrage among the lowest-educated, lowest-paid, and / or benefit claimants, by telling them that these people are taking their jobs and are the reason their lives are shit. Yep, Yaxley-Lennon pleads for donations from these dupes from his sun lounger in Spain, and Farage… Farage – married to an immigrant – needs to just fuck off and doesn’t warrant any more column inches anywhere. We’ll not even start on Trump, the most corrupt piece of shit to ever hold the American presidency. To cut to the chase, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the worst of it is that the rich are doing so at the expense of the poor, as executive pay soars year on year while the workers who earn the money to fund those executive salaries receive below-inflation pay increases, year after year. Circuitously, but by a necessary detour, I arrive at the point: the rise to the top isn’t achieved by positive qualities, but by means of subtraction, and Battery Farm rail against all that shit by punching outwards, punching upwards, and punching hard with heartfelt fury against the system, the status quo.

Looping back to the cover art, the graffiti on the devastated, flame-wracked building is a statement in itself, and tells you where The Battery Farm stand. They’re the good guys, on the right side of history. They’ve got fire and passion in abundance, too.

The surprise here is just how accessible ‘Your House Looks Spook’ is. It’s no radio-friendly pop song destined for any R1 playlists, but it is strong on hooks – and would perhaps even qualify as punk-pop if it wasn’t so damn dense and dirty. And this is why it’s great, of course. Dense, dirty, angry is what I’m here for.

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Ritual Error – Terminal with Benefits

Posted: 11 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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25th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Two years on from their debut, Dial in the Ghost, London noisemongers Ritual Error are cack with an album which they threaten ‘takes the band in a meaner, more angular, direction’, defined by ‘Abrasive bass, shrill guitars, frantic and precise drumming, everything sounds like it’s gonna fall apart. And for the sickos: howled lyrics about sexual alien abductions, an island state obsessed with 12-foot immigrants, and booking agents who turn themselves into tattoos to please their clients. Plus, a shit tonne of JG Ballard references!’

As a huge Ballard fan myself, this only adds to the appeal. The thing that’s struck me about his writing in recent years – particularly his later works – is that it’s only grown in relevance. The rise of the flag shaggers last year – ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ as the racist shitheads behind festooning every lamppost with national flags branded it – compelled me to revisit Ballard’s final novel Kingdom Come. Published in 2006 – yes, twenty years ago – it’s study of rising fascism in the context of rampant consumerism and materialistic boredom felt like reading news reportage as much as a novel.

It’s an inescapable fact that we live in the weirdest, scariest, and darkest of times, and I’ve suggested before that the making of noise is perhaps one of the last rational methods of dealing with the world as it now is, and Ritual Error seem to fully embrace this idea on Terminal with Benefits.

The jerky, jolty, lurchy ‘songs’ are interspersed with brief interludes, untitled passages mere seconds in duration, plus the five-minute parenthetical ‘instrumental’ which sits in the middle of the album. Yes, Terminal with Benefits embraces all of the difficult bends in the roads, the awkwardness and the resistance. I begin to wonder if there are even any benefits to the terminal status of our societal decline.

‘Tapeworm’ is a gnarly mess of distortion and anguish, and lunges into Shellac territory in no time. Great! But also ‘woah!’ This is some gnarly, heavy shit, an abrasive blast of discord. ‘Hung Up On a Clown’ is a lurching, psychotic blast of disorientated confusion, staggering hither and thither and calling to mind Leeds’ finest, Blacklisters.

Noise rock has been around for a while now, but you know you’re hearing the best of it when it makes your stomach lurch and you feel a bit queasy and vaguely dizzy, and perhaps even a bit stressed and a sense of bewilderment closes in from different angles. With the looping guitar parts and surrounding racket, the sense of overwhelm and anxiety arrives early while listening to Terminal with Benefits.

‘Domestic Pattern’ is a truly jolting assault which stars a bit juddery, then goes totally askew. And it only gets messier. And messy is the word. This is one fucked-up shit moras of noise, with slanted skewed guitars – not metallic or distorted, but clean and trebly.

‘Family Plot’ is Shellac amped up to the point of queasiness, and reminiscent of a slew of gnarly 90s acts, and the swaggering swing of ‘(Instrumental)’ (which isn’t an instrumental at all) hits hard. The same is true of this album as a whole, a work of noise rock par excellence.

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September Song – The Perfect View

Posted: 8 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Sons of Art – 18th October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s been four years since September Song released Two Miles Out. That album, they say, rather like its predecessor, The Arrogance of Time ‘started off reflecting more on global events, but ended up introspective once again’. A lot has happened in the last four years. Having crawled out of the pandemic, the world is now a place of constant turmoil, with wars raging all around the globe, climate change threatening our food supplies and our very ways of life, and then there’s AI… It’s in this context, John Douglass writes, that ‘The Perfect View continues along the same pattern with the deeply personal intertwined with the wider world. It’s full of frustration and anger at humanity’s inability to look after our ‘beautiful world’ whilst always trying to remain optimistic.’

To realise these eleven songs, the core duo of John Douglass (harmony and spoken vocals, acoustic and electric guitar) and Steve Hogg (lead and harmony vocals) are joined with a veritable roll-call of musicians – no fewer than fifteen contributors are credited, bringing an array of talents from drums and percussion, and bass, to saxophone, pedal steel, Portuguese guitar, flugelhorn, flute, and mandolin. For all that, the arrangements balance lusciousness and layering, with an apparent ease and simplicity. They describe themselves as ‘alternative pop’, but this feels inadequate for conveying the span of the styles on offer here, with elements of folk and indie spun through tunes which are, in places, fairly straightforward radio-friendly rock. And while most of the songs have an uptempo, upbeat, easygoing vibe, the lyrics are often altogether darker.

‘I Cry For You’ sounds pretty chipper, until you hear Hogg deliver the lines ‘You shit on my dreams, destroy everything / I cry for you.’ It’s quite the juxtaposition of content and form. Likewise ‘Hey John’, which brings a lightly jazzy flavour proceedings, and features in the second chorus, ‘Hey John, so you’re doing well / But what the fucking hell is it all about John’, after painting a pretty dark scene in the opening verse:

I saw 24 people on the floor, they were lying on the ground

The mothers, the freaks, the children, I like them around

Don’t step on the microphone, it’s lying on the floor

I was quite unwell for a while but I think I’m better now

It shook me up, it let me down, made me feel, like running aground

There’s a dip during the second half, where by the seven-minute ‘One Good Summer’ slides rather too comfortably into smooth jazz territory. There’s no small irony in the fact that the most overtly commercial song on the album is also the weakest, followed by the honky-tonky ‘All Alone’.

John Douglass’ lyrics are a clear strength, and take different forms: while given to the use of rhyming couplets with a meter which is as clear on the page as when sung, he’s equally prone to more prose-like forms, and even presenting short narratives and quite visual vignettes. The details contained in the narrative of ‘Pray for Me’ are keenly observed, depicting, among other things, morning anxiety and ageing. The album’s closer, ‘Beautiful World’ refers back to the lyrics of ‘Pray for Me’, providing a neat thematic bookending.

As such, there’s considerably more going on when you start to dig into the songs, and things aren’t nearly as jaunty as they initially sound.

AA

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Lustmord Lombardo – The Pulse Of Atoms

Posted: 7 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Ipecac Recordings – 2nd October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Who had a collaboration between drumming legend Dave Lombardo with dark ambient / industrial demigod Lustmord on their bingo cards for 2026? No? Me neither, but then I didn’t have the US attacking Iran or an outbreak of the plague in Russia, either, so maybe my finger isn’t as much on the pulse as I thought.

This coming together has been simmering for a fair while, after all: they met backstage at a Fantômas show, introduced by mutual friend Buzz Osborne, around the time that Lustmord and Melvins released their collaborative album. That was released in 2004. It’s certainly been some time in the offing, then.

While Lombardo has enjoyed a 40-year career playing with Slayer, Misfits, Mr. Bungle, Suicidal Tendencies, and Testament among others, Lustmord’s modus operandi has largely been as a collaborator, with nearly as many albums produced with other artists as as a solo artist since he first appeared on the industrial scene with his eponymous debut in 1981.

It’s perhaps partly because of the sprawling – and lengthy – careers of the artists involved that The Pulse Of Atoms is a work that proves hard to place. It’s certainly a hell of a departure for Lombardo, given that this is, first and foremost, a dank, ominous ambient work, on which only one of the seven compositions runs short of the six-minute mark. The drums are very much a part of the texture and the atmosphere, rather than a driving or dominant force. It’s interesting to observe how a drummer whose field is metal and rock – however broadly applied – sits in a work which is explicitly neither rock nor metal, and moreover, is largely unstructured, formless, even.

“One thing about an album like this is that you can’t really point it out as being part of any specific genre or hopefully any specific period,” Lustmord explains. “Is it from last year? Is it from 10 years ago, is it from 20 years ago, is it from 5 years in the future? It’s trying to create something that has its own sound, not tapping into whatever musical language or history you’re familiar with. It goes way, way further back. This is the sound of planets dying or of stars being born. It’s about a bigger picture. It’s the sound of the birth of the universe and the death of the universe; it’s not rock and roll.” It most certainly is not, and this is very much the heart of the album’s power.

The first piece, ‘An Eternal Presence Part I: Unknown’ begins as a murky and unsettling rumble, and it’s fully two minutes before the percussion arrives. And when it does, it’s a rolling, tribal thrum. It is rhythmic, but the thunderous beats emerge from a deep, dark sonic swamp, amidst hints of Nordic forest paganism, and stop and start and feel as tentative as they do aggressive. Counterpart ‘An Eternal Presence Part II: Relentless’ lives up to its title with truly thunderous percussion, which rolls and rumbles with a rare intensity, before sliding into the grey gloop of ‘Paleomagnetic Resonance’, a dark ambient piece which drifts, formless, creepy, a slow-moving unsettling expanse of sound which drifts like fog and conjures a vision of a barren wasteland. It hums and drones and rumbles and suddenly, three minutes in, aggressive drumming crashes in and heavy drones glide down sonorously… the weight is palpable.

We crawl from the glacial desert that is ‘Beyond the Vast Cold Waste’ trepidatious, tremulous, into an apocalyptic world. Explosions ricochet in the distance. It feels like the world is ending. The experience is unsettling, but unshocking: we all knew the end was nigh. Didn’t we? This sounds and feels like the end of days. It’s suffocatingly dense. The weigh presses down on the shoulders and the back of the neck.

Like ‘An Eternal Presence’, ‘The Desolate Shore’ also spans two parts with a combined time of almost fifteen minutes. It’s here that we finally find a sense of true rhythm and groove, and Lombardo delivers driving dynamism against a swirling vortex of dark noise. The experience is like being sucked into a vacuum. It’s genuinely scary – like a warzone, like the collapse of civilisation, like the end of time. The final track, ‘The Abyssal Deep’ is ten minutes of the most desolate, disturbing ambience you’ll hear all year. It will suck the life out of you through its density alone.

This album feels less like a collaboration and more like a collision of musical colossi from very different spheres. And it’s immense, and intense.

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Ghost Painted Sky – Kissing Lions

Posted: 6 October 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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6th October 2026

Leeds grungers Pulled Apart by Horses celebrated punching a lion in the throat on their breakthrough single: Massachusetts darkwavers Ghost Painted Sky eschew such violence, and on their latest ‘maxi-single’ release, are all about kissing them.

The inverted commas around the format are by no means intended as mockery or derision: I remember well when the maxi-single was a specific format, initially on 12” and, later, CD,and differentiated from the EP, which usually featured four or five tracks. The maxi usually consisted of an extended version of the A side / single, the single version, plus the B-side. It was the standard from around the mid-80s until the late 90s, particularly in mainland Europe. And that old-school maxi is precisely what we get here from Ghost Kissing Sky – only digitally, of course.

Ghost Painted Sky (to refer to them by the acronym of GPS feels wrong and misleading – somewhat ironically) formed to create dark, introspective music, built on the foundational influences of trad goth, post-punk, and darkwave in 2014, and according to their bio, ‘their approach has always been to treat the music as a vehicle for processing life’s struggles and ultimately for catharsis, release, reflection, and rebirth’. So how does this fit with being smoochy with big cats? It hardly sounds bleak or gothy, even allowing for the fact The Cure did ‘The Lovecats’ (which was neither bleak nor gothy, but a fun, frivolous pop tune).

Founder and multi-instrumentalist David Strong explains that “‘Kissing Lions’ describes those mostly vain attempts to seize on anything that creates a fleeting feeling of being alive for a moment amid relentless waves of the humdrum, doldrums, and failure, which so often end up being misguided and ultimately just creating a thicker mire even more strangling than the original situation one sought to escape… bad decisions that bite back and create further downward spirals.” Ah, yes, that’s more like it!

And when it comes to the sound, ‘Kissing Lions’ is a swirling, brooding work, defined by a swelling, chorus-heavy bass, picked, reverby guitar, and sweeping synths, in a fashion highly reminiscent of The Cure circa Disintegration. The addition of violin adds depth and a further layer of mournfulness. And lyrically, it has all the hallmarks of quintessential goth – existential anguish, frustration, self-punishment:

Turn it off, this channel’s boring, see?

This is not how my life was supposed to be

So I take this poison inside of me

If it’s not three minutes and thirty three seconds of synthy gothy darkwave perfection, it’s got to be pretty close.

The ‘Effervescent Remix’ is not an extended version – in fact it’s a second shorter than the original – but is, as the title suggests, presents the song with a rather more buoyant slant with a synthy bassline replacing the original, bringing something of a Mixed Up vibe to it.

If a similar synth bass sound is repeated on the third track, ‘My Words Are Not My Own’, it’s to quite different effect, pulsing steadily and insistently alongside a metronomic beat and beneath a fractal guitar tones, and it’s all to good effect, and this is a tidy, neatly packaged taste of Ghost Painted Sky – and a perfect example of what the maxi-single was – is – all about.

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SmutClub Ldn – Limp Bizkoff

Posted: 6 October 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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18th September 2026

Laaandaaan! Init? Heart of rock ‘n’ roll shizz… well, perhaps when Britpop was all the rage, but the new generation is seemingly more likely to turn up and sweep your doorstep with a dustpan and brush than to puke on it while staggering home from a club at 2:30am. There are good reasons for this: they may well be pissed off with the state of everything, because everything’s shit, just as it was in the 90s and 00s when grunge and nu-metal were all the rage – and rage is indeed the word – but they’ve been told repeatedly to quit the lattes and smashed avocado toasts if they want to get on the property ladder. It’s pretty rich advice from people who could spend Friday night down the pub and go on holiday (without feeling guilty over contributing to climate change) and still buy a house for just four times their salary. Put another way, the grunge and nu-metal revivals have been driven by the same shit conditions which inspired nihilistic anger thirty and forty years ago, only now the conditions are actually shitter.

In the face of that, what do you do? How do you even keep going on a day-to-day basis? Wages aren’t keeping up with inflation, and everything just gets shitter by the day. But do SmutClub Ldn want to break stuff? Maybe, but for this single release, SmutClub Ldn go light: as we learn, ‘Limp Bizkoff is all about appreciating time with your friends, while playfully “begrudging” duties like having to clean up the mess. The climax of the song encapsulates the joy of a good tea and snacks gathering with your loved ones around you’. I mean, Biscoff is in itself pretty middle class, but then so is owning musical instruments these days, and, I dunno, having the heating on or affording new clothes.

‘Limp Bizkoff’ is pretty heavy, sonically., with three minutes chunky, chugging, nu-metal grind. The chords hit like slabs of concrete, the churn in harsh and heavy, there are discordant notes and sinewy chimes from the spindly guitar. Lyrically, it’s altogether lighter, providing an unusual juxtaposition. Good clean fun, yes, but… first world issues for sure. And not only is dunking biscuits grim, it leaves a crumb sludge in the mug, which is even grimmer.

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Megafragma / New Concordia / Kid Kid Squid – The Black Horse, York, 1st October 2026

Posted: 3 October 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ is playing just before Kid Kid Squid start, and I find myself on a rare reflective trip on how times have changed. I was in primary school – aged eight – when it was released, my school reopened on the evening that the full-length video was aired on the BBC so we could all watch it on a TV on a trolley in reception. Even at that young age, it felt like a moment in musical history. No musical release is such a global event now. Not even half-time at the Superbowl has a sense of occasion which comes close. Culturally – in no small part on account of the advent of streaming, but also the absence of music on television now, which means that the promotional video has far less reach and impact – music has come to be treated like sonic wallpaper. Do people really listen to Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift, or is their bland fare simply amiable background? Come 2015, a headteacher is forced to apologise after showing the ‘Thriller’ video to some primary-age pupils (age seven and eight) because, according to their complaining parents, they suffered ‘night terrors’ afterwards.

I expect the members of Kid Kid Squid, David and Katy – who emerged from the rocked-up dance covers act The DDK – will remember the release of ‘Thriller’ well. How well they remember the 90s is probably another matter. It’s evident from their penchant for banging beats that they spent some time having it large during the rave years. Having tried out their brand of driving techno with live guitar at an Electronic Music Open Mic (EMOM) night a few months ago, this is the duo’s first gig proper, and they’ve got things pretty tight. The first track is a bit Utah Saints, but with more of drum ‘n’ bass leaning – and the drums and bass are both thunderous. Are they rock with rave beats, or rave with rock guitars? However you slant it, the sound is outstanding. Crisp and clear, the beats are pounding and the heavily processed guitar is like a tweaking Roland TR303. Midway through, they drop their eponymous track and it simply explodes both in energy and volume – and while the chorus of ‘We ain’t no kid and we ain’t no squid!’ might not be the pinnacle of poeticism, it’s good fun – and factually accurate. These things matter. The set culminates in a frenzy of flange. That’s good fun, too, and that’s a fair summary of what KKS are about: not so serious, hi-NRG, fun times.

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Kid Kid Squid

I’m not sure what happened to the Old Concordia – apart from the Polish-built sailing training vessel which capsized and sank off the coast of Brazil in 2010. Sturdy drumming and soaring guitar definite their alt-rock sound. They’re solid and then some, and it’s a remarkably confident debut (they’ve both played before, and together, but this is their first outing as a two-piece). Atmospheric passages fill the space between songs, thus avoiding awkward silence or – worse – awkward chat and banter. They must have poured some hours into rehearsing to come out this fully formed. I’ve no idea where the bass was coming from. The drummer isn’t wearing headphones, so there’s nothing to indicate a click track or sequencing, but there must be something happening behind the scenes. Maybe it’s simply the power of the mind and some kind of magic. But what’s behind the scenes is immaterial, really. Out front, we get blistering guitars, chunky riffs and some of the most incredible drumming. Verdict in short: amazing. Horsemusic have done it again in introducing us to another act worthy of national attention.

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New Concordia

Megafragma are a relatively new act, but comprising some old faces, including, on guitars, Alexander King, of Glass / The Sound of Glass – quite possibly one of the most preposterously pretentious bands I’ve ever witnessed. But hey, he’s only the guitarist and backing vocalist, right? Right.

They rock up in red jumpsuits: that’s ok. The Wharf Street Galaxy Band, one of the finest acts to evert emerge from York / Leeds wore red boiler suits. And these guys are tight. Polished. Slick… They’re an amalgamation of post-rock, post metal, post post… which is actually pretty cool. But they do go a bit punk-pop and demonstrate some emo leanings, which is less so. Still, I could let that go… There’s a niggle here, and I need to chew on it while I dissect.

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Megafragma

More than just a click track, they have electronic drums augmenting the live kit. The bass is a bit buried in the mix, but still, they sound super-slick, anthemic, arena-standard and the drums – which are technically faultless – are well up in the mix and propel the songs along with a dynamic force. This is not your average pub-gig band, and the set is loaded with the wow factor. But the songs… pause and exhale… are quite forgettable. As the set progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that this is very much a case of kit over content. More like Middlingfragma. They sound immense, but hollow. Technically superlative, but missing some essential ingredients, namely soul, and passion.

I can’t grumble too hard: three high-quality bands for £0, and pints in proper glasses for £5.20. This is where it’s at.

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