Posts Tagged ‘Crossover’

Smutclub Ldn–Elephant

Posted: 3 August 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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31st July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

We really do seem to be experiencing a Nu-Metal renaissance right now. And of all the genres I would have put money on sinking without trace, it’s Nu-Metal, which felt like a flash-in-the-pan fad in the late 90s. The idea of crossing rap and metal wasn’t entirely new even then. Aerosmith’s collaboration with Rum DMC may have sown the seeds, but it was most definitely a meeting of rock and rap. The collaborations which featured on the Judgement Night soundtrack in 1993, however, very much brought rap and metal together, and set the precedent for what Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park would go on to do. Helmet and House of Pain? Faith No More and Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.? Slayer and Ice T? These were some fierce collisions of rap and metal. This was radical. But that was 1993 – and what a time to be alive! And now it’s 2026. Thirty-three years have elapsed. Holy shit. It’s not exactly ‘nu’ anymore. Is it? Perhaps it’s time for a rebrand. And since we’ve had Post-punk and even The New Wave of New Wave, how about Nu-Nu Metal, or ‘The Nu-Metal Revival’ or ‘The Nu-Metal Renaissance’?

But while the Nu-Metal scene of the late 90s was dominated by blokes venting versions of adolescent rage (although Fred Durst was nearing 30 when Limp Bizkit released their debut album, and there always felt like a sense of arrested development hung around the genre – older guys making records for disaffected teens), the current scene is altogether more diverse, and most significantly, we’re seeing female-fronted acts like Eville breaking through and kicking arse.

Smutclub Ldn share some common ground with Eville, as is happens, with whacked-out pop autotune colliding with skull-crunching riffs. And as such, ‘Elephant’ is a brain-melting identity crisis of a single: clocking it at precisely three minutes, it’s a mental mash-up of nu-metal, emo, and pop, all brought together and heated under compression, with explosive results.

The verse riff is a gnarly, churning beast which chugs and undulates menacingly, the chorus sounds like it belongs to a completely different song, and the breaks and bridges are something else again. How do you switch between hands-in the-air anthem and brutal slam-dancing and back again, and again, in just three minutes? ‘Elephant’ is positively schizophrenic, and love it or hate it, it’s the most inventive thing you’re likely to hear in 2026.

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Ballpeen – What You Need, What You Deserve

Posted: 28 July 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Just over six years ago, one of my favourite labels, Cruel Nature Records, released Pachinko, the third EP / mini-album from Newcastle noisemongers Ballpeen – a band appropriately named, given their capacity to hammer home heavyweight riffs with bludgeoning brutality. With noise rock, grunge, and hardcore punk all in the mix Pachinko was rabid, raw, primitive, recorded, not produced.

2020 was a productive year for them, with the release of two live recordings and a split EP, and 2021 saw the stop-gap EP Bunch of Sevens, which featured material recorded in 2017 at the same time as their debut release. And then, silence. It transpires that they sadly called it a day some time after this. They’re not the first band to abort before the release of their debut album by any means, but the shock news is that they actually recorded an album which then got ditched.

But now here it is. Ballpeen are no more, but finally, there is closure in the delivery of the lost album, What You Need, What You Deserve. And it’s a beast. Thirteen songs packed into thirty-seven minutes. That’s an average of approximately 2.8 minutes apiece. And into these compressed timescales, they pack in so much energy, so much explosive riffery, and so much… just so much.

The first single, released in May, is also the first track on the album, and from ‘Modern Life is Hell’, it’s immediately apparent just how much they’d evolved from previous releases. It’s by no means polished or pop, but the sound is crisper, denser, the songwriting more sophisticated, a solid hook snaring the listener early, with a sound and style which warrants comparisons with Hawk Eyes, who are also now sadly missed. And the sentiment probably resonates more powerfully now than when it was recorded. How times have changed – and not for the better. We thought the pandemic was hell – because it was. But little could we have anticipated what was to come.

What follows is nothing short of a gut-busting guitar-driven blast. ‘Unit Three’ amalgamates the steely nihilism and sinewy strain of Kowloon Walled City with a thick bass-driven grunge heft. There are some neat descending bass runs in the second half of the song which remind me of something else, but we’re into the squalling wall of feedback that drives ‘Poverty of Ambition; before my brain has remotely got itself into gear. But ballpeen are very much in gear: there’s no mid-album slump, no breath-catching ballad here. Instead of slowing the pace, they crank up the distortion and stoke up the rage.

The bass on the intro to ‘Engram Theory’ is nothing short of rib-rattling, a chunky, clunky, bruising assault of pure density, reminiscent of Shellac, for sure, but closer to that of Blacklisters with their original bassist – which is a fair comparison for the song as a whole, really, and it provides a welcome reminder of just how the North of England has been so strong in its generation of noisy bands over the last fifteen ears or so. Seattle and Chicago have the longstanding reputation for their scenes, but we’re looking back to the late eighties and early nineties for their heydays: more recently, Leeds and Newcastle have proven to be the crucial hotspots, and Ballpeen’s contribution is strong. The belated arrival of What You Need, What You Deserve only cements this view.

Second advance single, ‘Ukiah’ is yet another fiery onslaught, and compels one to consider what might have been. It’s true that such speculation is futile, and instead of mourning, we should be grateful, and the juddering riff of ‘Crossing Waters’ provides every reason to be grateful. It hits so hard, it makes you sweat. There isn’t a weak moment on What You Need, What You Deserve. In fact, there’s barely a moment to catch breath. It’s intense, alright.

There can be little doubt that it’s best to quit while you’re on top, kill things while you’re at the peak of your game (Nirvana perhaps took that a bit too literally, but Big Black are a fine example of a band who left a concise but unsullied legacy). And to the list, we can now add Ballpeen, a band who demonstrably saved their best for last.

What You Need, What You Deserve needs to be heard. It’s all killer and no filler, and more – and it doesn’t just go all the way to eleven: it starts at eleven and works its way up over its skull-cracking thirty-seven minutes. It’s the good shit alright, hitting with enough force as to dislodge your fillings.

This must surely be their legacy.

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Sun Ra ǀ Merzbow – Strange City

Posted: 8 July 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Reviews
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Cold Spring – 26th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

This release is something of a curio, in the sense that it’s a collaboration between two of the most famously prolific recording artists of recent times – Sun Ra recorded over 100 full-length albums, comprising well over 1000 songs prior to his death in 1993 at the age of 79, while Merzbow, active since 1979, has released in excess of 500 albums to date. However, this collaboration occurred posthumously for Sun Ra, and it’s worth quoting the context as given by the label, Cold Spring here:

Officially licensed from Irwin Chusid, who oversees the catalogue of the late Afrofuturist artist/composer/bandleader Sun Ra, Cold Spring negotiated rare and unreleased tracks from the Sun Ra archive to be remixed and treated by Masami Akita (aka Merzbow). The tracks incorporate the jazz power of Sun Ra with the brutal excess of the Japanese noise artist Merzbow.

Originally released by Cold Spring a decade ago and long sold out, the music was spread across vinyl and CD, with completely different music on each format. The tracks have now been collected together for the first time, using the original master tapes and presented in the order intended (the vinyl format dictated the order due to optimal sound quality restraints).

Included for the first time on any release is a bonus two minute track entitled ‘Granular Jazz Part 5’, a special composition created for ‘Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone’, a weekly radio show on BBC 6 Music in the UK. It was broadcast ahead of Merzbow’s live concert at the FAC251 venue in Manchester in September 2016.

There are obviously practical reasons why the different formats featured different track listings on the original release, although these things can prove frustrating for fans finding themselves faced with the dilemma of missing material or forking out for multiple formats. This ‘complete’ reissue has the added incentive of an unreleased track, and while it’s only a couple of minutes of unreleased music, it does round off what is unquestionably a monster release – the six pieces having a combined run time of a massive 104 minutes.

So, to begin with a brief content comparison, the contents of the original CD – the 32-minute ‘Livid Sun Loop’ and ‘Granular Jazz Part 2’ (34 minutes long) makes up the corresponding first disc here, while the 2016 vinyl contained ‘Granular Jazz’ parts 1, 3, and 4. Chances are that some will still be dissatisfied that the CD tracks still haven’t made it onto vinyl, but you can’t please all the people all of the time, and as much as I’m a fan of vinyl myself, the longform nature of the compositions does seem well-suited to CD.

As for the contents of this ten-year expanded reissue… it’s no criticism or complaint to comment that it very much sounds like what you’d expect. ‘Livid Sun Loop’ encapsulates the album in its entirety in the first few minutes – shrieking horns flying in all directions against an apocalyptic churn of cement-mixer noise with the treble cranked to the max, feedback and flayed circuitry exploding like fireworks on New Year’s Eve. A squall of treble, scraping, screaming, like a Brillo pad scouring away at the inside of your skull. There are prolonged segments which are pure Merzbow, shredding digital noise, but then, suddenly, amidst the blitzkrieg, there are honking horns and random toots which pop through the raging wall. The track is a truly relentless assault, and brutally harsh. The frequencies very much favour the top-end, with howls and hisses of tinnitus-inducing quality tearing from the speakers with not so much as a second’s let-up. Every time you think that this must – must! – be the limit, Merzbow does the Merzbow thing of finding new frequencies with which to cause injury. Oh yes: this hurts. But what else did you expect? Some cozy club vibes, a bit of mellow sax and piano? Right. Merzbow brings the harshest head-shredding hell.

Twenty minutes in, there’s a segment that sounds like everything is breaking – not just the gear, I mean it sounds like a field recording of the collapse of civilisation, the absolute end of the world as we know it. And it just goes on. And on. What have I done to deserve this? What has anyone done to deserve this? Actually, perhaps this is the answer to the UK’s issues in the penal system. Being forced to listen to this a couple of times may be a viable altern alternative to shorter custodial sentences. But here I am, listening with great interest and even with a degree of perverse pleasure – although after half an hour, I will admit that I’m wilting somewhat, and not just because it’s 30C with 70% humidity in my office at 9pm. This is nothing short of punishment: it hurts. And it ain’t very jazzy. It’s a mangled mess of skin-peeling, face-melting horror.

But if ‘Livid Sun Loop’ makes for a long and challenging half hour, you’d better buckle in and brace yourself for the endurance test of all endurance tests. To dissipate any doubt, I am a big fan of noise, and enjoy basking in blistering waves of aural annihilation. And Strange City is special in its vision and scope, and its sheer enormity. There are fleeting flickers of strolling double bass which pep through the wild bleepery, woozy drones and sheet metal shredding.

‘Granular Jazz Part 1’ yawns and snarls, bibbles and bleeps and pulses and creaks and swashes and swinges its way through just shy of eighteen minutes of existential anxiety, but it’s simply a prelude to part 2. The slow fade-in and trickling digital cacophony is simply a lure, creating the illusion of listenability. And it does take some time to build. But, of course, build it does. A quarter of an hour in, and it’s reached a sustained crescendo or chaos that’s dense enough to crush your skull. The jazz quota is ratcheted up, too, and the result is something else. Finding the words for this is a challenger, but I’m starting to feel that it’s not words I need, but an ambulance.

Strange City is… intense. In large parts, it feel like Merzbo is the dominant party in this mash-up (which is essentially what it is), and at its best, Strange City makes for a fitting posthumous release for Sun Ra. But from whichever able ou approach it, Strange City is one serious blast of noise. Killer all the way.

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Listen: ‘Skull Smasher Psychic’ by Cult Member

Posted: 28 August 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Three years after releasing their 2022 debut Infinite Death, an album that earned them a Spellemann nomination (Norway’s answer to the Grammys), Norwegian crossover outfit Cult Member are back from the frozen north with another hard-hitting ear-bleeder titled GORE.

A tongue-in-cheek strike at social unrest, draped in blood-soaked ’80s slasher imagery, GORE rips forward with the fastest, sharpest riffs in thrash, powered by the relentless fury of a true hardcore D-beat backbone.

Recorded by Ruben Willem, GORE is set for release on September 19 via Loyal Blood Records, and it’s blistering slab of thrash/hardcore sure to ignite fans of Cro-Mags, Power Trip, Slayer, and D.R.I.

‘Skull Smasher Psychic’ is the first single. Hear it here:

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Re:O – Crimson Desire

Posted: 15 August 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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13th August 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Re:O’s ninth single is a song of frustration, of dissatisfaction, about giving everything and receiving underwhelming returns. It’s a song about life’s struggles. And it takes the form of musical hybridity taken to another level. And when it comes to taking things far out, Japan has a long history of it. Only Japan could have given us Merzbow and Masonna, Mono and Melt-Banana, Shonen Knife and Baby Metal – acts which couldn’t be more different, or more wildly inventive. J-Pop may not be my bag, but on reading that Re:O take ‘the best of Japanese alternative music and combin[e] western metal and rock… Re:O has been described by fans as “Japancore” a mix of Metalcore, industrial metal, J-Pop, Darkpop, cyberpunk inspired symphonic layers with high energy and heavy guitar.” It’s a tantalising combination on which I’m immediately sold.

Hybridity in the arts emerged from the avant-garde, before becoming one of the defining features of postmodernity: the second half of the twentieth century can be seen as a veritable melting-pot, as creatives grappled with the notion that everything truly original had already been done, and so the only way to create something new was to plunder that which had gone before and twist it, smash it, reformulate it, alchemise new permutations. If the zeal – not to mention any sense of irony or knowingness – of such an approach to creativity seems to have been largely drained in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, Re:O prove that there’s life in art still after all.

With ‘Crimson Desire’ they pack more ideas into three and a half minutes than seems humanly feasible, starting out with snarling synths, meaty beats, and churning bass – a combination of technoiundustrial and nu-metal – before brain-shredding, overloaded industrial guitar chords blast in over Rio Suyama’s blistering vocal. And it blossoms into an epic chorus that’s an instant hook but still powered by a weighty instrumental backing. The mid-section is simply eye-popping, with hints of progressive metal in the mix.

The only other act doing anything remotely comparable right now is Eville, who have totally mastered the art of ball-busting nu-metal riffery paired with powerfully melodic choruses rendered all the more potent for strong female vocals, but Re:O bring something different again, ad quite unique to the party. It’s all in the delivery, of course, but they have succeeded in creating a sound that is theirs, and theirs alone. No two ways about it, they’re prime for Academy size venues, and given a fair wind, they could – and deserve to be – there this time next year.

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Listen: ‘Neptune Anteater’ by The Dwarfs Of East Agouza

Posted: 20 June 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Constellation welcomes The Dwarfs Of East Agouza to the label and will release the Cairo-based trio’s new album Sasquatch Landslide in early October.

Maurice Louca, Alan Bishop, and Sam Shalabi expand on their telekinetic fusion of North African rhythm, heat-haze improvisation, shaabi rawness, free jazz, and psychedelic groove, following acclaimed albums on Sub Rosa, Akuphone, and Nawa Recordings.

Sasquatch Landslide overspills with the group’s signature trance-inducing explorative energies, anchored by Louca’s hypnotic beats and electronics, with Shalabi and Bishop deploying guitar and alto saxophone in a variety of signal-mashing modes. Comprised of seven febrile jams across 42 minutes, this is at once the most focused and twitchiest album in the DOEA discography to date. Recorded by Emanuele Baratto (King Khan, Elder) and mixed by Jace Lasek (Elephant Stone, Sunset Rubdown, The Besnard Lakes), the record will be issued in 180gram vinyl and CD editions, featuring artwork by Mark Sullo.

First single ‘Neptune Anteater’ is a signature example: Shalabi opens with a skittish repeating guitar groove (that draws from his parallel lifelong practice as an improviser on oud) as Louca progressively builds a widescreen 6/8 hand-drum rhythm while oozing bass notes support Shalabi’s excursions around the central riff. This is kinetic trance, East Agouza-style.

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Excel – Seeking Refuge

Posted: 5 August 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Southern Lord – 19th July 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Southern Lord have once again excavated a long-lost release from the California underground scene, with a particular emphasis on hardcore and metal from the late 80s and early 90s, this time with a reissue of Excel’s 1995 album Seeking Refuge.

For context, while saving myself typing some inferior paraphrased recap, here’s the summary from the bio: ‘From the dark alleys and dead ends of Los Angeles, EXCEL have been delivering maximum crossover since crossover first crossed over. Their classic albums Split Image (1987) and The Joke’s On You (1989) remain linchpins of the genre decades after their release… Originally released in 1995 while grunge dominated airwaves and MTV, Seeking Refuge offers a glimpse at an EXCEL many have never heard before. Out of print for decades, Seeking Refuge will finally get its due, complete with a guest shot from H.R. of Bad Brains (on “Take Your Part Gotta Encourage”) and a video starring Tony Alva for the anthemic single ‘Unenslaved.’’

This is clearly one for fans first and fore most, but equally, one assumes its purpose is to bring the band, and the release, to a new audience, namely the many who missed it the first time around. And there will likely be many – like me – who simply hadn’t encountered the band previously. On the basis of the above, I suspect this isn’t really the optimal point of entry, but then, that’s how it often goes. I came to The Fall by Kurious Oranj and Swans via Children of God: arguably not the most representative of releases, but then again, comparatively accessible. I figure this is a fair summary of Seeking Refuge. It’s certainly an odd fish, and one that sounds solidly rooted in the early 90s.

Opener ‘Unenslaved’ is a bit hair rock meets late 80s thrash for the most part, and reminds me why I was never really into either; there’s just something about the guitar posturing, paired with the clean vocals trying to sound a bit tough that’s kind lame to my ear and to my way of thinking. But it goes a bit acoustic Alice in Chains in the middle, and the idea that ‘crossover’ may actually be represented by a stylistic switch mid-song.

There are some monster, churning, grungy riffs across the album: ‘Take Your Part Gotta Encourage’ is exemplary, not least of all because the chuggeracious thunder is topped with some really showy and extravagant soloing which isn’t afraid of hurtling headlong into the realms of excess.

In terms of composition, the songs are tightly structured, often making sharp turns or tempo changes midway through: ‘Drowned Out’’ suddenly slams on the breaks and drops to a slow Sabbath-esque riff that’s more of a head-nodder than a headbanger, and kicks the pace up again for a big riff finish – but again, there’s some epic fretwork that just feels that bit too much like the worst of 70s rock excess.

For all the context that suggests that Seeking Refuge was lost on account of its being out of step with the zeitgeist, it seems to overlook just how much grunge stuff was quite in thrall to 70s rock and this isn’t a million miles from Soundgarden, unless people are really going to bicker over the details. Don’t get me wrong: there are some proper metal moments: ‘Riptide’ really cuts hard, but still takes cues from Sabbath’s ‘Supernaut’, while ‘Overview’ sounds for all the world like a Rage Against the Machine rip. Seeking Refuge is solid, but not incendiary, and the endless fretwanking does get tired after a time.

With secondhand prices for the original vinyl sitting at around £35, and for the CD around a fiver, I do wonder just how badly the world is itching for this, but then, perhaps this reissue will spark renewed interest more broadly.

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Oscar Mic – Sun Star

Posted: 16 July 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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12th July 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

As genre crossovers go, Post-Punk/Alt Hip Hop is quite a rare one. Perhaps not as radical or as extreme as the kind of crossovers with alternative and metal bands and hip-hop acts that took place on the groundbreaking Judgement Night soundtrack in the early 90s, but at this point in time, where pretty much anything goes, this is unusual. Actually, I’d like to step back from that for a moment. Not so long ago, it felt as if anything went, that postmodernism had truly reached its peak and you could have grindcore with a kazoo and not be too surprised. More recently, while pockets of weirdness are strongly entrenched – as the recent Guardian article on Nerdcore, which managed to mention Petrol Hoers and BxLxOxBxBxY, both vehicles for beardy, ferret-keeping, pant-wearing York legend Dan Buckley (disclosure – Noisenibor performed a one-off collaboration with him in his guise as Danny Carnage, which was everything you’d expect) – things seems to have become more siloed, more set, more fixed, when it comes to genre parameters. Fluidity and crossovers remain, but wild invention seems to have given way to something of a return to convention.

‘Imagine Beck meets Sleaford Mods, meets Slowthai’ the bio says. Only, listening to this, you don’t have to imagine.

What’s noteworthy about these touchstones is that two are very white, and two are very British, the British acts both being overtly political, while all three draw on elements of hip-hop in their work. None of this is to denigrate anything about Oscar Mic or ‘Sun Star’, and nor is it a criticism to comment that it’s a hip-hop tune which is overtly white, as delivered by a pale guy with a vaguely gingery moustache. It’s a true testament to multiculturalism and artistic cross-pollination, and what’s more, ‘Sun Star’ boasts some truly sinister bass frequencies which strike way low and hit hard like subsonic torpedoes beneath the shuffling beat that clatters away nonchalantly all the way. Toss in some Beastie Boys and you’re getting a sense of where this is at.

Then there’s the really melodic indie break, and the thing has something of a quirk / arty / studenty vibe, while the video bursts with experimental oddness. And when you piece it all together… it’s gloriously mismatched and off-kilter. And we should celebrate its non-conformity.

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Lip Critic – Hex Dealer

Posted: 17 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Partisan – 17th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

It feels like no time at all since I was reviewing the cassette release of Lip Critic II, and that their ascent from self-released EPs and cassette-only albums on microlabels has been astoundingly rapid, but time has a way of playing tricks when it comes to perception: Lip Critic II was, in fact, released almost four years ago. And now, signed to Partisan and having gained significant traction playing SXSW, with the NME claiming bragging rights for giving them a cover feature a few months ago, as well as a five-star review last November, they’re certainly breaking through. There’s no question that it’s entirely deserved, either: despite being overtly weird and clearly non-mainstream, they’re a quintessential cult alternative band, the likes of which gain substantial hardcore followings and are revered long after their passing.

With a lineup consisting of two drummers and two synths, Lip Critic are no ordinary band, and they produce no ordinary music, and Hex Dealer is a schizophrenic sonic riot. It’s a bit cleaner, the production rather more polished, but fundamentally, it’s the same deranged percussion-heavy cacophony that Lip Critic have always given us, and it’s still true that most of their songs are short and snappy – around two-and-a-half minutes. Consequently, Hex Dealer is aa succession of short, sharp shocks, like poking a socket with a wet finger. The whole thing is a spasm and a twitch.

‘It’s the Magic’ brings together a smooth croon that has hints of Marc Almond and some shouty rap mashed together with some Nine Inch Nails industrial noise and some woozy hip-hop beats and some aggressive drum ‘n’ bass, all in under four and a half minutes.

Lead single ‘The Heart’ is a standout, for is frenetic, kinetic energy, and its hookiness, but it’s a question of context: it’s a blissed-out pop tune in comparison to the blistering percussive onslaught and distorted dark hip-hop blast of ‘Pork Belly’, a cut that takes me right back to the early 90s, specifically the Judgement Night soundtrack. Single ‘In The Wawa (Convinced I Am God)’ is entirely representative of the album as a whole, compressing all of its warped elements into a noisy, spasmodic, hi-NRG two minutes and nineteen seconds. Crazed, hyperactive, it’s explosive and it’s unique.

It’s a rock album with rap trappings. It’s a rap album with rock trappings. It’s a mess and shouldn’t, doesn’t, work. Only, it does. And with ‘My Wife and the Goblin’, they introduce some gnarly noise which isn’t metal by any stretch, but it certainly gets dark near the end. I say ‘near the end’, but it’s only a minute and forty-one and it’s a real brain-melting mess of noise.

If the beats to grow a little samey over the duration of the album, the counterargument is that the thrashing percussive attacks give the set a vital coherence. Packing twelve tracks into just over thirty minutes, and more ideas per minute than any brain can reasonably be expected to process, Hex Dealer feels like Lip Critic’s definitive statement.

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Sons of Alpha Centauri – Pull

Posted: 29 March 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Exile on Mainstream – 28th March 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Cutting straight in with a big old guitar chug is a bold and hard-hitting way to open an album. No intro, no preamble, just big, beefy chuggernaut riffery. Bam! I’ve no aversion to a bit of intro a bit of preamble, but it’s refreshing to hit play and be smacked around the chops. The sound – and style – is quintessential grunge, and that grit, that grain, it has a grab that’s more than mere nostalgia, it’s a physical experience. But it very soon becomes apparent that Sons of Alpha Centauri are no generic grunge template rehashers, despite their adept use of the quiet / loud dynamics: ‘Ephemeral’, the opening song, draws in elements of quite blatant prog and classic rock, with melodic vocals and a reflective refrain of ‘Ephemeral… we are ephemeral’ that’s unashamedly prog in its ‘big, deep philosophical contemplations’ approach to lyrics. It’s certainly more ‘Black Hole Sun’ than ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.

Pitched as a ‘natural evolution’ to predecessor Push, they proffer ‘a powerhouse of searing post hardcore, alternative metal and progressive hazy rock’, where ‘Across the album, Sons of Alpha Centauri capture both a renaissance of the 90s post hardcore of their Sacramento luminaries, and a contemporary take on atmospheric dream-like rock music.’

Across the album’s nine tracks they straddle genre boundaries in a way that feels remarkably natural. Time was that I would be turned off by an album that was heavy instrumentally but not so heavy vocally – meaning I’d have been a bit hesitant about this. But it’s a mistake to perceive clean, melodic vocals as somehow weak or a detraction, as I discovered from listening to The God Machine and Eight Story Window, and Jonah Matranga packs in some emotional integrity into a strong set of songs.

‘Ease’ brings a watery-sounding bass and big, chunky guitar, and the combination makes for an unusual and interesting textural contrast, while the title track rocks particularly hard, the distorted guitar positively buzzing the speakers, Matranga giving a taut, tense performance.

At times I’m reminded of Amplifier, and not only in their incorporation of space themes – only far grungier in their melding of flighty prog and ballsy guitar attack. The chord structures of the aching ‘The Ways We Were’ are reminiscent of Placebo, and while sonically and lyrically there’s no real similarity, something about the dynamics and the heightened tension that defines Pull do warrant comparison, especially the slower, sadder ‘Tetanus Blades’. Sitting in the very middle of the set, it makes for the perfect album structure, and it’s clear that Pull has been created, crafted, curated, as an album rather than just some songs. ‘Doomed’ brings delicacy and introspection, anger and anguish delivered with a downcast sigh and wistful guitars. On ‘Weakening Pulse’ the guitars shudder and shimmer, and there’s a blend of dark aggression and choppy accessibility about ‘Final Voyage’. With its refrain of ‘Regenerate, regenerate, regenerate’ I can’t help but think of Dr Who, but that’s no criticism, and despite the big, bold, ambitious songs and matching production, they manage to steer well clear of going Muse on us.

The songs are pretty concise – mostly sitting around the three-and-a-half to four-and-a-bit minute mark, but have all the hallmarks of bigger, more epic songs. Yes, the vibe is very much rooted in the alternative sound of the 90s, but painted with the broader palette of the twenty-first century, whereby more diverse and eclectic elements have come to be accepted. It seems strange to think in 2024 that back in 1994, rap/rock crossovers were pretty revolutionary, that the soundtrack to Judgement Night was groundbreaking. In time, it came to pass that we discovered more complimentary hybrids, and Pull is a demonstration of this. There’s much detail to absorb and these are very much early impressions – but with so much to assimilate, Pull has everything about it that makes for an enduring album which only digs deeper with repeat listens.

AA

920630

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