Aural Aggravation

8th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s both an understatement and perhaps a needlessly obvious thing to remark that there is an overwhelming amount of new music around right now. And so it’s aggravating, not to mention disappointing, to hear people of a certain age – and I’m talking the over 35s here, but it becomes considerably more pronounced as the demographic slides up the scale – bemoaning that there’s no decent music being released anymore. No, that is not the problem. In fact, it’s simply not true, on any level. The problem is that there is so much new music that, depending on your tastes and preferences, finding the wheat among the chaff can be like finding a needle in a haystack, if we’re going to push some cliches. The cliches are relevant, because even among the ‘good’ music, stylistically, at least, a lot of what’s out there is a rehashing of other stuff, and finding anything that feels new or different is rare.

Bellhead are doing something different. Sure, there are elements of post-punk, goth, noise-rock, but there’s nothing ‘template’ or ‘by numbers’ on display here. The fact they don’t have a conventional musical lineup is a key factor, of course: two basses, a drum machine, and no guitar.

The title track is sparse at first, there’s reverb lead bass played high on the neck ringing out and taking the job of a lead guitar, over a grimy, low-slung low-end bass, with some menacing, distorted vocals snarling low and dark. It’s more atmospheric than industrial, at least in the verses – twisty, grindy, reminiscent of PIG with its breaking out into a roaring anthemic chorus – but that chorus sounds like UK goth circa ’86 when it collided with hard rock. It’s huge, it’s hooky, and it’s strong.

‘Heart Shaped Hole’ is hard and heavy, aggressive but with some well-conceived texture and a production that brings everything to the fore simultaneously, amplifying the intensity. The sound is dense, and having bemoaned how a few bands have suffered from their drum machines being too low in the mix during live performances of late, Bellhead utilize theirs to full effect, pitching the beats well up in the mix. It smacks you right in the face and lends the songs an essential muscularity, providing a relentless driving force to which the bass welds itself. The rhythm section is the pulsating heart of any band: with Bellhead, with everything being the rhythm section, more or less, the pulsations aren’t just strong – this is a relentless blast of bass and beats. And there is not much let-up, either. ‘Shutters + Stutters’ is gritty and dark but with a serrated pop edge.

The piano intro to ‘No Dead Horses’ is something of a false lull, because it soon twists and snarls and sneers, emanating menace and sleaze while crunching overdrive grinds over a loping rhythm.

The brace of remixes tacked into the end may be nice bonuses on one hand, but feel perhaps superfluous on the other, with a Stabbing Westward remix of ‘Bad Taste’ from their previous release, and a remix of ‘Heart Shaped Hole’ wrapping it up. The remixes are solid, the former being a super-high-octane dancefloor stomping smasher. But the EP’s five tracks alone are an outstanding document that feels complete in itself., balancing fire and force and heavy atmosphere. But from whatever angle you view it, Threats is all killer, and finds Bellhead taking things to another level.

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