Posts Tagged ‘hooks’

Eville – Brat Metal EP

Posted: 2 November 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

When you’ve singlehandedly created a new subgenre, what better way than to cement the trail you’ve blazed with a release bearing its name? This is precisely what Eville had done here with the Brat Metal EP. For the uninitiated, their unique contribution to the musical landscape has been to give the slugging, concrete-slab guitar riffery of nu-metal a makeover, and by blending it with strong pop elements and delivering it all with a strong, empowering feminist message and truckloads of attitude, they’ve kicked the whole ‘sports metal’ ‘rock for jocks’ kind of thing in the nuts and made it something that’s culturally relevant here in 2025.

Maybe I need to unpack ‘relevant’ here. It’s a fact that in music, what goes around comes around, and there are always cycles of recycling, revivals and renaissances, waves and generations. But a nu-metal revival always seemed unlikely because it was so patently uncool, even at the time. But here we are: a new generation is discovering Limp Bizkit, who are back and riding a wave that combines nostalgia for those who were in their teens around the turn of the millennium, and the fact their kids are now teens who are educating themselves with their parents’… what, Spotify playlists now? But more significantly, women are still having to fight just as hard now as they ever did just to hold ground. Sexism, misogyny, and abuse are rife, and there are enablers everywhere.

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This all makes Eville’s rapid ascent even more impressive, and something the world truly needs. It’s remarkable just how a flip can transform testosterone-led whiny shit into something truly powerful, and Eville have, over the course of a handful of single releases gone from being hopeful newcomers to Kerrang favourites performing Reading and Leeds with festival dates already on the calendar for 2026. There’s a very good reason for this: as I’ve been saying from their very inception, they’ve completely nailed their sound, are confident in their identity, and have killer tunes.

Brat Metal offers four more. None of the songs on here breach the three-minute mark, and all are thumping, riff-driven blasts bristling with hooks. ‘BR4T MBL’ powers in with a Prodigy / later Pitch Shifter vibe paired with sneering vocals which are autotuned to fuck for the verses, but then switch to a lung-busting guttural roar. Single cuts ‘No Pictures Please’ and ‘Accidents Happen’ bring real attack, sassy rap and stuttering beats colliding with force. In the former, ‘bitches’ takes on a different slant when delivered by a woman, and it feels like there’s a reclamation of sexist language happening here.

‘Bikini Top’ again brings the dense chug and squalling harmonics of Pitch Shifter, and at the same time offers the flippant lyrical simplicity of Wet Leg’s ‘Chaise Longue’ but it’s charged with the challenge to the male gaze, and it’s a lesson in how it’s possible to make music that’s heavy but accessible, to entertain while offering substance instead of mere fluff. Brat Metal shows that Eville can sustain the intensity and the quality over the duration of more than just standalone singles: it is packed solid, and their most focused document yet.

AA

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Listen: ‘Phone Call’ by Death Pill

Posted: 21 May 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Two years on from their sensational debut, Ukrainian ‘Riot Grrrls’ Mariana, Anastasiia and Nataliia, aka Death Pill recently announced that they are back. Locked and loaded with a mighty set of tunes on their highly anticipated second album SOLOGAMY, which is … as they put it. ‘A bold exploration of personal empowerment’.

SOLOGAMY is fierce, heavy and melodic, and is set to land on June 20th, 2025 (New Heavy Sounds). New single ‘Phone Call’ is probably the most accessible Death Pill track to date. Very catchy, with a terrific arrangement, cleverly put together, it’s a brilliant slice of … well … pop.  You might call it ‘pissed off pop’ something Green Day or Foo Fighters wished they’d written … a new genre if ever there was one. The band comment,

"This song is just a real sad love story when no one calls you back. 

When you are waiting for a call from someone you care about, time starts to drag. Every minute feels like an hour, every moment feels like an eternity, and every sound of the phone makes your heart freeze. You check it several times, even though you know the phone is on silent mode. Thoughts fill your mind, “What if he forgot?”, “What if he doesn’t want to talk?”, “What if he has someone else?”.  

These doubts and fears turn into a real game of mind, where you become your own harshest critic. The agony of waiting can be overwhelming. You begin to notice how it affects your daily life: you can’t concentrate at work, you get distracted when talking to your friends, and even simple pleasures seem less significant. Thoughts about the call become annoying, like a fly that won’t leave you alone.  

Every time the phone vibrates or the screen lights up, you hope to see his name, but disappointment comes again and again. Waiting for a phone call is a fragile emotional state that touches the deepest corners of the soul. It requires patience and humility, but it can also teach us to appreciate the moments when the connection does happen. When the long-awaited call finally rings, all the suffering seems worth it – if only for a moment. That moment can be so sweet that all previous agony is forgotten. Waiting for a call is not just an emotional roller coaster; it is a reflection of our vulnerability and desire to be understood. The desire to be needed by someone.

We are opening our hearts, hoping that someone else is also willing to share the journey with us."

AA

D Pill

Argonaut – As Cool as Fightmilk

Posted: 31 March 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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24th March 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Ironically, it’ll take more time to upload this review of the latest single by lo-fi indie / alt act Argonaut than it will take to play it, let alone write about it.

For a band who really pushed themselves in 2023, releasing a track a month to evolve their ‘open ended’ album, Songs from the Black Hat, which wound up featuring thirteen tracks, and who may have been expected to ease the pace a bit while they took stock and began to assimilate the practicalities of a new lineup, they’ve really surpassed themselves so far this year.

The video is pretty slick in relative terms, but the song itself is a classic and quintessentially Argonaut lo-fi cut with big, thick, buzzing bass and guitar, and the dual vocals which really do define the band’s sound – Laura’s hyper-bubbly pop tones contrast with Nathan’s monotone drawl, and here they really do exploit the quiet/loud dynamic form over the course of an explosive and thrilling minute and a half. Yes, a minute and a half: sneeze and you’ll miss it. But in that time, they still pack in a strong, hooky chorus, and I’m assuming the song is a reference to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia rather than the band, Fightmilk – and while they may never be as cool as the former, they’ve got a clear edge over the latter. So that makes them pretty cool, really.

AA

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Seeds of 77 – Lockdown Breakout

Posted: 24 May 2021 in Albums
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6th May 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

As the band’s name suggests, their roots and influences lie very much in the spirit of 1977. The year which saw ABBA, Bread, The Eagles, The Shadows, Johnny Mathis, and Fleetwood Mac dominate the album charts, and the year’s best-selling singles being by the likes of Wings’ ‘Mull of Kintyre’ and acts like Leo Sayer, Brotherhood of Man, and Hot Chocolate here in the UK, will also be forever marked in history as the year punk broke. Alongside all the anodyne MOR pap and slock disco, 1977 also saw the release of Never Mind the Bollocks, The Damned’s Damned Damned Damned , The Clash’s eponymous debut, The Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch EP, and The Dead Boys’ Young Loud and Snotty, as well as classic releases by The Stranglers and Richard Hell & The Voidoids.

These, of course, are the seeds these guys are referring to, although they also draw on a host of other stylistic elements, ranging from psyche to glam, and in a title that seems to echo Sham 69’s ‘Borstal Breakout’, the sextet have forged their debut long player in lockdown. As the title suggests, they’re keen to escape this interminable drag and get the fuck back out there.

There’s a choppy ska-tinged guitar that leads the high-octane opener ‘Kick it Out’, which sets out their stall nicely. It’s unaffected, and while the playing it tight, the production is direct and unfussy. The wandering bass cuts through the trebly guitars and it demonstrates all the hallmarks of authentic punk.

With the majority of the tracks clocking in at around the three-minute mark, it doesn’t take long for them to power through thirteen songs, and they’ve totally nailed that three-chord chop. But there’s also a sense of crafting behind the songs, with a solid grasp of dynamic range, and if most of the choruses are more about everyone shouting the hook than any real harmonies – it’s true to the spirit of the genre, being hooky in that most primitive of ways: keep shouting it till it sticks.

Then again they throw in some curveballs – ‘Lost_Found’ is a soulful piano-led duetting ballad augmented by aching strings, where the hell-for-leather drumming is replaced by a subdued machine. Placed mid-album, it’s a touching tune that serves as an interlude before the full-on chug of ‘Reality Bites’. The switching of lead vocals between Vince Mahon and Michi Sinn adds to the album’s range and dynamism: they’re both strong vocalists, but distinctive stylistically, beyond the obvious male / female.

Seeds of 77 have got some solid riffs and catchy choruses, but it’s the bass that really makes the sound, going far beyond the thudding four-square to-the-floor thud that’s standard, and instead showing some real flair – and when trad punk bands are two-a-penny, those distinctions count for a lot.

AA

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Ben Wood & The Bad Ideas – You’re The Crash I Needed

Posted: 13 October 2020 in Singles and EPs
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30th September 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

Ben Wood & The Bad Ideas return to follow up on August’s ‘Black’ with ‘You’re The Crash I Needed’, and of this release Ben says, “We wanted the lyrics to reflect an awakening, a coming-to after a period of being insular and unaware of one’s own actions but for that to be entirely forced upon you by someone else. Musically ‘You’re The Crash I Needed’ was composed to mirror that sensation of when you fall asleep in front of the TV and then it seems explosively loud and totally overwhelms the senses when you wake up.”

That jolt… to nab the line penned by Editors, it kicks like a sleep twitch. We’re all guilty of sleepwalking through life at some point or another, oblivious of ourselves and the potential repercussions of our actions, and such somnambulance has become the characteristic behaviour in 2020 as we drift from one day to the next. The kick will happen, and no doubt the jolt will provide a real shock to many.

‘You’re The Crash I Needed’ is an indie-goth gut-punch of a song, with hell-for-leather drumming and interweaving guitars reminiscent of Rosetta Stone and early Mission and it’s got a vibrant energy and a kind of sweeping openness that’s simply not commonplace in contemporary music. Then again, nor is that kind of chorused guitar sound.

Balancing breeziness and shade, this is a tight and tense rack and a clear single choice, and while it’s retro it’s anything but cheesy. I for one am excited.

AA

Single artwork

Salvation Jayne – Coney Island, Baby!

Posted: 6 February 2020 in Singles and EPs
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31st January 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

Salvation Jayne have been regular features here for a while, and it’s been an enjoyable journey seeing them evolve. ‘Coney Island, Baby!’ is overtly rock, and continues the trajectory of its predecessors, but the verse nods at a post-punk vintage with its chorused guitar line.

Similarly, while it may lack both the hook-heavy immediacy of ‘Burn in Down’, ‘Coney Island, Baby!’ presents a different aspect of the band, and also showcases what some may call a more ‘mature’ approach to songwriting.

More of than not, ‘mature’ translates as middle-aged and dull, and it may lack the grunge-drive fire of ‘Cortez’, but in the context of ‘Coney Island, Baby!’ I’m talking restraint that precedes explosions, and nicely, because nuance and the measured slow-build intro give an even bigger impact. And let’s be clear here, the chorus still crashes in with some chunky riffage. It’s just more refined. It’s also a fist-pumping song of self-affirmation.

Is now a good time to sit down and discuss punctuation? Probably not, but it matters, and Salvation Jayne’s latest instalment inspires that conversation, however brief. ‘Coney Island, Baby!’ is a comma (and an exclamation mark) away from Lou Reid, and I’m going to assume it’s intentional given that its placement works in context. And for that, I like them even more, because nuance and detail matter, and besides, it’s a cracking single.

AA

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I’m no Chessman – Amateurs (EP)

Posted: 20 November 2018 in Singles and EPs
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26th October 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

‘Dramatic and bold’… ‘driven and experiential’… songs which deliver ‘a perfectly executed sense of tension and release’… I’m No Chessman promise a lot with this, their second release. Do they deliver all of it? Well, it’s a matter of taste as much as opinion.

When I relaunched my reviewing ‘career’ such as it is a decade ago this month, I thought it would be neat to make providing objective reviews my signature. Over time, I’ve come to revise this ambition, having realised that the way one responds to music has precisely nothing to objective matters like technical competence. Granted, poor production can ruin a great set of songs, but the best production in the world won’t transform songs that are technically proficient in terms of musicianship but otherwise predictable and lacking in emotional resonance exhilarating.

Music is intensely personal, and how an individual responds to a composition isn’t purely about the recipient or their tastes, but their headspace and the precise context in which they first hear it.

All of which is to say that this EP is well executed, and despite what the title may suggest, is decidedly not the work of amateurs (just as it has nothing to do with John Niven’s debut novel, which is about golf. And wanking. Well, maybe it’s about wanking. Some of it is a bit Fall Out Boy). It’s that combination of poppy, up-tempo guitar-driven punk with spitting angst that will enthuse or antagonise dependent on your politic.

But yes, throwing in bouncy pianos and widdly guitar breaks in between big, hooky choruses, it’s impossible to deny that they do bring elements of ‘riven and experimental’ and ‘(melo)dramatic and bold’ with their expansive theatricality. All of which is t say that objectively, the band’s appeal is clear. Subjectively… I’m probably not the right demographic.

AA

Im No Chessman