It’s about racism. How because of the client journalists fronting most UK media and news, the far right has managed to fool Britian that its problems are brown people in dingies arriving on beaches, but not the super-rich influencing politics in their favour and making life economically and emotionally miserable for most of us. And how people in our life – at work, our community – came out as racist when it became safe to do so. And how horrible that is to experience and see play out. Perhaps we have black or brown kids and they were babysitters, and made a bond, and have history, and now….was anything ever safe? True?
Llama Mollo have a lot of family and friends. And they’ve brought them all down. It feels more like a second cousin’s birthday party than five minutes after doors open for a gig showcasing a disparate bunch of bands when I arrive. My first thought is of how the grannies will take to Bitchcraft. My second thought was ‘good for them’. They’ve bought tickets and made the effort, which is more than can be said for many on a lot occasions, and maybe they’ll even have a good time.
The acoustic indie duo have some tidy tunes with poetical lyrics and deft guitar lines, and if they’re nervous making their debut, they don’t show it beyond the occasional awkward-sounding laugh. The reverb-soaked guitar part for ‘Inconspicuous’ has hints of Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’, and the song sees them share vocal duties for the first time in their seven-song set. In an unexpected plot twist, Lawrence (guitar and vocals) switches to electric guitar and takes the lead on the vocals for the last song, and there’s a drum machine pumping from the PA. ‘Mr Blue Shoes’ is post-punky and makes for quite the shift in every way, and, seemingly from out of nowhere, tells us that this is an act who have a lot up their sleeve, and much potential to explore. A very promising first outing, and one to add to the watchlist for 2027.
Llama Mollo
BitchCraft spent their uni years developing their skills, and recently relocated to London to further evolve and to see if they can progress. On the evidence of tonight’s hometown return – holy shit. Leaps and bounds, leaps and bounds. There have been some moves in their ranks. Their new singer, Lily, is the former drummer who would previously switch with singer Amelie to front a couple of songs, and stepping up to take the mic on a full-time basis she’s really come into her own. It’s not just the vocals – which are so, so powerful, and she’s got a proper grunge roar that sends shivers down the spine and sets the hairs on the back of your neck aquiver – but she is a commanding presence who dominates the stage, and the entire room. The new drummer is powerful and energetic, too. The result is a set that’s raw, grungy, and finds them playing better than ever. New song ‘Loser’ hints at a poppier direction, and has swing as well as crunch. And then they close with a cover of L7’s ‘Shitlist.’ They absolutely nail it. They’re pure quality, and deserve a bright future in the big smoke.
BitchCraft
There’s a certain element of controlled chaos about Chaffinch set – and a certain element of chaos without the control. The jarring interplay of the twin guitars sees them trading shards of treble over thick, rolling basslines and stop-start drums. The song structures aren’t conventional or even necessarily obvious, and there are parts which are semi-improvised, and not for the first time, I’m reminded of Shellac in they combine math-rock and noise-rock, discord and angularity. There’s not a moment where all four of them are on the stage (which makes getting a shot of the whole band a challenge, and the guitars are more often than not played in front of the stage and there are trailing cables and instrument swaps… although at least on this outing there’s enough concrete in front of the bass drum to keep the kit in place instead of encroaching forward towards the edge of what is a particularly bijou stage. But herein lies the joy of a Chaffinch set: there’s a physicality, a kineticism, to the performance, and just as the songs are in a state of continual flux, so there is perpetual movement on (and in front of) the stage, making for a hyperstimulating and highly entertaining experience.
Chaffinch
Due to a late reshuffling of the schedule, Manchester’s Oort Clod, who should have been the main support before BitchCraft, find themselves in the headline slot. No pressure, then. They do a decent job of it, too, encouraged by a supportive and welcoming crowd, a respectable number of who have stuck around from the start. This is one of the things which makes these Utterly Fuzzled nights what they are: people turn up and are open to hearing different stuff, accepting they won’t love all the acts equally but providing a warm and accommodating atmosphere. It’s a DIY microscene unto itself, in some ways resembling that which centred around CHUNK in Leeds a few years ago, and the likes of which is rare – but absolutely vital for showcasing new and up-and-coming and niche acts.
Oort Clod
Oort Clod present a set of two distinct halves: during the first, they’re a fairly middling jangly indie band in the British tradition of the mid-80s to early 90s. They avoid being twee, but are good fun. And then there’s the second half, which sees them turn towards a style that’s more US indie / college rock of the mid- to late-nineties. It’s a bit looser, more Pavementy. The switch is occasioned by a poetry intermission, during which bassist Richie, whose last gig it is before he goes travelling and exploring a career in writing reads a couple of pieces from his chapbook. It’s a bold move, which some would probably consider a bit wanky, but they wear their arty and literary leanings well, and with an admirable confidence. He is, after all, wearing a brocade jacket and thoroughly beaten-up hat perched atop his head, and if the wild amp feedback mars the moment somewhat, the fact they style it out with humour reveals the character of the band – and it makes them a good fit for Fuzzled, where there are no divas, no dickheads, and everything runs to time. And it’s a 10pm finish. All the win.
Their bio tells us that ‘Cor de Lux didn’t come out of a content pipeline, a shared folder, or an algorithmic moment. They came out of a rehearsal room,’ and their Bandcamp page describes them as ‘4 friends in a Post Punk-Noise Rock band. Melodic hints and synth tones that trickle into a garage angst progressive fury.’ These two snippets give an insight into what kind of band they are, and how they operate, but don’t really give the measure of Year of the Horse, an album which goes beyond both post-punk and noise-rock or any permutational crossover of the two to render something that’s varied, embraces experimentalism, and at times is quite off the wall.
Single cut ‘The Cringe’ is exemplary, crashing in on a lolloping rhythm and blistering squall of guitar by way of a backing to a dispassionate but nevertheless urgent-sounding dual vocals from Tim Lusk and Dawn Moraga, before suddenly pulling up and following a short but meandering moment of ponderous desert rock, swerves off in a vaguely trippy prog direction, with a swirling synth and strolling synth. In contrast, ‘Ping Pong’ – not a cover of the Stereolab classic – is a slice – and at six minutes long, a very generous one – of quintessential dream-pop. A laid-back, balmy indie song with a hint of C86 whimsy, gently melodic and evocative of dappled sunlight in woodlands in early summer, it’s neither post-punk nor noise-rock, but it’s easy on the ear – until the switch that lands around the four-minute mark when it unexpectedly takes off like a rocket. And it’s here that it becomes apparent why Ipecac would be interested in them. They’re a band unconstrained by genre boundaries: not necessarily weird, but different.
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‘Cannibal’ takes the chiming guitar and driving bass of the UK goth sound circa 1984 and spin them with slightly spiky vocals and a mid-80s indie twist – nothing that’s immediately specific to a band, but then not entirely generic either.
‘The Western’ whips up a choppy frenzy and is perhaps one of the most overtly post-punk-meets-noise-rock songs on the album, and it drives pretty hard, before ‘Bread Bag’ serves up a slice of mathy post-rock… but that’s not quite it. But I can’t think long enough to capture my thread because there’s a sudden explosion over overdrive, and then it’s off somewhere else again. As the album progresses, the harder it becomes to situate it in a way that feels in any way meaningful – but that doesn’t mean that Year of the Horse is in any way incoherent. The more wide-ranging and eclectic the songs are, the more the sound of Cor de Lux is defined.
‘The Deli’ is simultaneously motorik and noodly: Pavement might be an obvious touchstone, but it’s more obscure acts like Moderate Rebels that come to mind, and Rosa Mota, too, and as fast as can process and much faster than I can type, we’re into another post-rock noise burst and then some more breezy, jaunty indie rock. One thing that does stand out is just how un-American they sound, at least to my ear. Year of the Horse is quirky. It’s not a common American trait. It’s nuanced, and wile it’s by no means a flippant, inconsequential work – it’s anything but – it’s threaded with a kind of knowingness, a twinkle in the eye which hints at a certain humour. But more than anything, Year of the Horse is a work of genius, in that it brings together myriad incongruous elements and doesn’t just make them gel, but amalgamates them in a way which feels entirely natural. How do they do it? Magic, alchemy, or something, I guess.
So many acts strive to make hybridity work, and so many fail, because it feels forced, self-conscious, the segments don’t flow or connect up, and it sounds awkward, jarring. Not so with Cor de Lux, and Year of the Horse keeps it succinct with just nine songs and a run time of thirty-eight minutes, the majority of the songs sitting in the three-and-a-bit-minute bracket. It’s a rare beast, this: an album that will blow your mind, but subtly. It’s crazy, but it’s packed with tunes. Truly inspired.
Two decades have passed in the land of Gnod, yet the psychic travelogue only becomes more enthralling as it goes on. The page is turned, a new chapter begins…
Whilst this band has flourished via dauntless conviction, hive-mind magic and a fierce and uncompromising spirit, one ingredient has served as a crucial fuel for the fire – the monolithic singularity of the riff.
This second chapter of Gnod’s sort-of-anniversary trilogy also originates in the same six day sessions as the first, at Hellfire Studios near Dublin with producer Spud Murphy (Lankum, Black Midi etc). Yet the focus this time is on the transcendental heaviness and repetition that the band have often used as a primary fulcrum of their approach. This volume captures the sound of strings flayed, throats shredded, skins punished by the organic chemistry of this formidably powerful band in a room.
Chronicles of Gnowt (Vol. 2) will arrive via Rocket Recordings on 9th October and is preceded by the track and video for ‘The Witness’. Watch it here:
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Operating as ever stubbornly adrift of all or any genre restrictions, the coruscating workouts chronicled here evolved on the road in the last two years before being honed and perfected in the studio setup by Murphy. “Spud was masterful –recording live, pushing us to do more takes and then when the right take was done, by the time we got to the desk from the live room he already had it sounding great for playback” relates the band’s Paddy Shine.
The results are amongst the most fearsome and kinetic material that Gnod have summoned to date. The opening ‘The Witness’ takes a The Ex-ish groove and sets it in motion before driving a wall of incandescent guitar scree through it. ‘Ice Man’ redlines an animalistic Melvins-style framework into the realms of dystopian burnout. ‘Old Gold’ meanwhile centres on three-guitar interplay snaking around a muscular, taut groove, with Paddy’s feverish declamations acting as master of ceremonies.
As has often been the case for a band heavily driven by serendipity and intuition, the best plan is no plan at all. “We find quite regularly that spontaneity and the no thought approach works better than over analysis and detailed planning,” clarifies Chris Haslam, “Paddy’s stream of consciousness lyrical approach is another example of how when we remove our own will from the process, something purer, more real & more connected fills the void.”
NYC art-rockers Ecce Shnak present ‘Eddie, Legalistic Homeslice’, the second single from their full-length album Dandy Variances, anticipated later this year via Records, Man Records. Recorded and produced by Jeff Lucci, this single was mixed by Grammy award-winning producer Mario McNulty (David Bowie, Prince, Nine Inch Nails, Julian Lennon).
Formed in the mid-1990s and forged in NYC’s experimental scene, Ecce Shnak (pronounced Eh-kay sh-knock) is made up of David Roush (composer, bassist and baritone vocalist), Bella Komodromos (vocals), Chris Krasnow (guitar), Gannon Ferrell (guitar), and Henry Buchanan-Vaughn (drums).
An ode to camaraderie, ‘Eddie’ reaches its lyrical denouement with what may be the “oldest prayer of friendship", but sounds like a throwaway Rivers Cuomo line: “I pray you don’t be a rat in a rat-suit! Pray you don’t be a rat in a rat-costume!”
“Like ‘Larry, Sleepover Friend’ from our 2019 Joke Oso EP, our new song is a garage-rock homage to a beloved friend of mine. Like ‘Larry’, ‘Eddie’ explores big themes in great friendships: their gnarly ambivalences, their absurd misunderstandings, their inside-jokes, and their contradictory mix of irreverence with utmost care,” says David Roush.
“We are also overjoyed to feature two great friends as the co-stars of the music video, the preposterously funny and talented comedic duo Syd and Olivia! I was lucky to have met these two pugnaciously podcasting, thoughtfully Thespian, joke-slinging YouTube yokels on a fantastic journey to the Greek island of Crete two years ago, and the rest was thirst’ory.”
Bella Komodromos adds, “They absolutely kicked butt at their roles in this Wes-Anderson-hued buddy-comedy music video, directed and produced by DJay Brawner. It is our ardent hope that all fans of Ecce Shnak and Syd and Olivia alike can shart out with their hearts out to this badass collaboration!”
Apart from directing and editing the new video with Brooks Jones, Beth Narducci and David Roush, Brawner also worked on the video for the album’s lead track ‘Vincent’, an homage to superb music videos of yesteryear – for Meshuggah’s ‘Bleed’ and 311’s ‘Down’. Here, operatic trills collide with frantic rock energy in a high-decibel takedown of a formulaic antagonist through the power of one’s own voice.
Cor de Lux, the unorthodox alt-rock foursome from North Carolina’s outerbanks, who recently announced their signing to Ipecac Recordings, release their label debut, the J. Robbins-produced YEAR OF THE HORSE, on 18th September.
A preview of the nine-song album arrives today with ‘The Cringe’ and its accompanying video. The snarling single charges forward at full blast before veering into an atmospheric passage where the intertwined guitars of Dawn Moraga and Tim Lusk drift into haunting territory.
Moraga says of the track: “Living in a developing country really engraved in my heart about knowing what is important and what is not,” referencing her time abroad in Nicaragua. “Materialism fades like bad jeans. The exploitation of the poor to make the rich richer makes my blood boil.”
Bass player John Bliven adds: “’The Cringe’ explains our disdain of the billionaire ‘elite’ and the system that keeps them rapidly gaining. ‘I make a dollar a day’ refers to CEOs giving themselves a tiny salary while obtaining massive share value. Those shares aren’t taxed unless sold, and even then, that tax rate is less than the income tax everyone else pays.”
Watch the video here:
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Produced by J. Robbins (War on Women, Mary Timony), YEAR OF THE HORSE captures Cor de Lux’s competing impulses: abrasion and melody. Atmosphere and momentum, chaos and control. Across nine songs, the Kill Devil Hills quartet balances post-hardcore urgency, shoegaze bliss, and guitar-driven catharsis. Recorded with Robbins, the album preserves the raw chemistry that defines the band while pushing their songwriting into sharper, more immediate territory.
YEAR OF THE HORSE is available for pre-order now with the album available on multiple limited vinyl variants (including a hyper-limited Bandcamp exclusive swirl vinyl and Ipecac/Cor de Lux orange effect vinyl), standard black vinyl, cassette, CD, and digitally.
Long before joining Ipecac Recordings, Cor de Lux was creating their own ecosystem in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a place better known for wind, water, and distance than as an indie-rock launchpad. That outsider geography shaped them. There was no shortcut to visibility and no industry machine waiting nearby. So they did what bands do: they wrote songs, played hard, released music themselves, and kept going.
The group, Dawn Moraga (vocals/guitar), Tim Lusk (vocals/guitar), John Bliven (bass), and drummer Jacob Richardson, first introduced their sound on their self-titled 2020 release, followed by Mediain 2023. Across both records, Cor de Lux established a voice rooted in tension and movement: post-hardcore urgency, shoegaze atmosphere, guitar-centered unpredictability, and the chemistry that only comes from musicians learning each other in real time.
That chemistry is the band’s engine. Since their outset, the musicians have stayed true to their belief of creating art without ego. Preferring to arrive at rehearsals willing to chase ideas rather than dictating marching orders, their songs are born out of spontaneity letting each members’ skillset share equal space in the spotlight. As Moraga explains, the band will usually plug in and start jamming on a fresh idea before rehearsing their established set. Often, it will be a dead end road, but on special occasions it will cause them to scramble to get it recorded. “Usually once or twice a month we will hit on something and go ‘oh no, not another new song,’” says Moraga with a laugh.
YEAR OF THE HORSE sounds like a band that earned every inch of its growth. Cor de Lux has been building from the margins: hauling gear, making records on their own terms, and forging community one show at a time. Now, with the reach of Ipecac Recordings behind them, they arrive not as newcomers, but as something rarer: a fully formed band entering its next chapter.
The other day, my daughter came home from school complaining – not for the first time – about her English class, in which she’d been given ten minutes to come up with an idea for a story, and to plan the opening two paragraphs, and then perhaps another twenty to write the aforementioned paragraphs. She makes the same complaint about art and music lessons. “They expect us to write a song, with chords and a melody in fifteen minutes,” she moans. “Doing creative stuff just doesn’t work like that, Dad. How do they not know this?” She’s absolutely right. This is essentially where the distinction lies between making content and creating art, and artists all have different methods and work at different rates, often even between different projects. Sometimes, the thing just flows and – boom! It’s there. Other times, however, something just doesn’t quite click, and all the fiddling in the world doesn’t do it.
Ally The Truth, the new single from Devon-based alternative rock band Gravity Machine is, as they put it, ‘a track with a long gestation’. In fact, it began life in 2020, the same year they released their debut album, Red. There have been a few single releases since then, but it’s only now that they finally unveil this ‘epic tale of a relationship moving from curiosity to joining to fighting to resolution before finally hitting the universal truth of love and connection.’ That’s clearly the description of a work of art rather than mere content, and so it is that ‘Ally the Truth’ is epic in every sense, and not only in terms of its seven-minute duration.
It builds from an elongated drone with clattering drums reverberating in the distance, with a value lick of New Age vibes creeping around the edges before, suddenly, the song itself bursts in from nowhere, and we find ourselves in the midst of a sweeping amalgamation of alt-rock, psychedelia, and folk – a bit All About Eve, but also (yes, this is a bit of an obscure one, even for fans of 90s alt rock) a bit Eight Story Window (which is one way of saying, you should probably explore their album, too). It’s airy, atmospheric… and there are layers, and layers, and stages and stages – and with each segment, they step things up, until just a couple of minutes in, we’re being spun through a sandstorm of kaleidoscopic rock, before, later – much later – we find ourselves being escorted, gently, back down from the summit of the crescendo on a rippling piano and a chorus of voices. Such is the drama and dynamic of the song that it’s easy to lose the thread of the narrative – which means that you just have to go back and explore it all again. What a chore!
It’s not hard to grasp why this song took so long to reach its final version: ambitious would be an understatement. It’s compelling, immersive, atmospheric, exciting, and there is just so much happening. And all of it’s good.
Holy fuck. Sometimes, you want a racket, because it blows away all the shit, the, the anxiety, the bewilderment, all the other messy crap that is life right now. And I do mean right now: not ‘the twenty-first century’, not the 2020s – although the last five years has been a relentless pummelling of awful, awful stuff – but this is the immediate present we’re looking at here. ‘Unprecedented’ is a word we hear a lot. But we really do live in times which are unprecedented. Waking up every morning wondering what fresh new hell has happened in the hours since you went to bed, wondering if the world still exists and if you have really woken up or if this is all a hellish nightmare is gruelling.
With UPSIDEYERHEAD, PLQ MRX deliver that racket. Their bio tells it that ‘From the depths of North Philadelphia’s underground comes PLQ MRX, a project operating at the intersection of abrasive noise rock, acid-soaked psychedelia, and warped funk’. Say what? We go on to learn that ‘Beyond the music itself, PLQ MRX cultivate an aesthetic steeped in excess, altered states, and grotesque carnival imagery. Their world is populated by surreal characters and exaggerated rituals, exploring pleasure, debauchery, and sensory overload. The band leans into both the highs and the ugly turns of the trip, embracing chaos as a core element of its identity’.
When we discover that PLQ MRX have emerged from ‘the remnants of the Philadelphia collective Plaque Marks, who first surfaced in 2017 with the EP Anxiety Driven Nervous Worship’ and that the current lineup features current and former members of Author & Punisher, UNSANE and SWANS (having been joined by Vinnie Signorelli for this release), it all makes sense.
And yes, it’s every bit as wild as the amalgamation of ‘abrasive noise rock, acid-soaked psychedelia, and warped funk’ would have you expect.
‘Us V. Them’ crashes in with some wild, frenetic jazz action before a thunderous riff crashes in, drums and bass to the fore, guitar a wah-wah laden blitzkrieg that calls to mind The Stooges. The vocals – half-spoken, half-spat, thick with distortion and swamped in reverb, sit almost on another plane, growling and snarling away amidst the maelstrom. Making out the lyrics isn’t easy, but feeling the vibe zaps straight to the very core instantaneously.
There’s a dirty, low-slung swaggering groove to ‘Gansta White Walls’, which locks into a heavy bass-led workout and grinds away, building layers of depth a couple of minutes or so in before hitting the ‘frenzied, motorik’ pedal, while the eight-and-a-half minute ‘Gentrify My Skull’ is a brawling, squalling sludgy stoner doom monster, littered with scrappy samples and as ugly as hell, with mangled-to-fuck vocals and a relentlessly gut-churning bass, and bursting into a full-throttle blast of black metal at the end.
The final track, ‘Hundred Dollar Hot Dog’ is the album’s shortest, but packs the most into a mere three and a half minutes. It really does seem to be a song about an expensive hot dog, and brings the rage in spades, with a lengthy refrain of ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you’ amidst a squall of guitar and an all-pervading dense murk.
It’s rare to hear a release that doesn’t sound like anything else, but with UPSIDEYERHEAD, PLQ MRX have done it. It’s crazed, outside the box racketmongering of the highest order. It might be genius, it might be madness, but it’s absolutely head-spinningly awesome.
German-born, Ireland-based musician DAMIEN CAIN returns this winter with Standarte, an atmospheric, emotionally charged alt-rock album available from today December 12th on the main digital streaming services. Now living in Co. Laois, the artist describes the record as “the most honest and personal work I’ve ever made,” a project shaped as much by his three decades in music as by the new creative grounding he found in Ireland.
In order to celebrate his new effort, DAMIEN CAIN released the music videos for the songs ‘Fascinating Face’ and the title-track. A dark, emotional fusion of nu-metal and emo rock, ‘Fascinating Face’ the song explores the feeling of being trapped between denial and desire, telling yourself you’re not in love anymore, while every memory still pulls you back in. The video reflects this tension: a stream of hyper-real faces emerging from darkness, each one holding a different emotion: longing, fear, hope, desire, regret. Behind them, subtly woven into the shadows, DAMIEN CAIN appears singing the song, as if haunting their memories… or being haunted by his own. It creates an unintended, but powerful illusion: as though the story plays out inside the minds of the people on screen, and inside the places we hide our unsaid feelings. ‘Fascinating Face’ is about the intimacy we try to forget, the seconds we sealed inside us, the scent, the skin, the breath – the pieces of someone we carry even when we insist we’ve moved on.
The title-track goes back to ‘Wallenstein’, a song from the early ’90s. DAMIEN CAIN explained that “the original ‘Wallenstein’ was inspired by Salvador Dalí’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross. It was my protest song against war, power, and blind faith – written when I was twenty and full of rage and questions. The new song continues that thread, but from a different angle. It’s still a protest, but now it’s also a reflection. I’m angry about the same things, but I’ve learned to turn that anger into poetry instead of noise.”
Oakland alt-rock trio Sword Tongue presents ‘Murder White Noise’, a wry commentary on the state of the world and our attempts to soothe ourselves to get through it. The latest offering from their explosive Bonfire In The Tempest EP – their fourth to date.
In an increasingly stressful world, this song explores how people try to externalize their anxieties by consuming content that allows them to feel better about their own lives. We attempt to cope with the pressure of maintaining equilibrium by coming together to grieve, worry, and comfort each other, often finding that the only way to feel good about our lives is to reflect on others’ misfortunes.
Creating dark music for dark times, Sword Tongue is vocalist Jennifer Wilde and guitarist Gaetano Maleki, a husband and wife who launched this project in the pandemic year of 2020, now joined by renowned drummer-producer Dan Milligan.
“I started consuming true crime content as a way to turn off the thoughts that kept me awake at night and distracted me during the day. One day I told a friend I was a listening to a livestreamed trial where a lady put her husband on a burn pile. She said “WHOAH, what is that, murder white noise?” As I told people about the song, I found many others watch crime stories as a release from their stressful lives. It is important to bring that into the conversation about how we are coping today,” says Jennifer Wilde.
“Finding comfort in tragedy is new for me; during the pandemic and especially in the last year I find myself needing to look for reassurance that whatever I am facing is not as bad as it could be. ‘Murder White Noise’ was written as a way to come to grips that someone else’s pain is that content, and what that says about where we are as a society right now. Gaetano wrote the perfect guitar line that hooks you in to get to the truth of the song.”
On ‘Murder White Noise’, soothing vocals contrast with the song’s macabre lyrical content, while steadily thrumming instrumentation lulls you into a false sense of security. For a moment, the listener feels heard and encouraged, then questions their own motivations, left to wonder whether they are now the tragic victim in this story. ”From a songwriting perspective, this pulled a lot of anxiety out of me,” says Gaetano Maleki. “While writing the guitar and bass lines, I wanted to bring out tension to mirror the vocals, but with some kind of seductive undertones. I feel the instruments really complement the lyrics, like a hard boiled soundtrack.”
