10th December 2023
Christopher Nosnibor
It’s widely discussed how recent years have witnessed attention-spans ever shortening, as the effects of life in postmodern society impact our day-to-day lives. Bombarded constantly by a million media sources, adverts popping up all over everything all the time, using multiple devices and apps simultaneously, we’re all expected to be everywhere and doing everything all at once. It’s no wonder that streaming services record a skip rate of over 50%, and in the region of 25% of songs are skipped within the first five seconds. In my line of work, I have to decide pretty swiftly if a release is worth my time and the expenditure of energy on devoting words to it, but five seconds? That said, any track that starts with a howl of feedback is always going to grab my attention, so Angry Old Man are onto a winner here with ‘Quatram’. The question is, can they capitalise on it?
The answer is yes. The feedback gives way to a classic hard rock riff, soon followed by crashing drums. With real swing and swagger, it’s a riff you can really bang your head along to. The vocals, though, are grunge all the way, a gritty drawl. The guitars step up a notch and drive home, thick with distortion to a solid riff-centric ending. And clocking in at under two-and-a-half minutes, it’s just right for the attention-deficient. There’s no pissing about here, slamming in hard and leaving the job done before you know what’s hit you.
AA
Aural Aggravation 