Posts Tagged ‘Noise Rock’

Forensics – Dogtown

Posted: 20 October 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Gotta love the Leeds scene. It keeps on throwing up noisy bands who really capture the zeitgeist. Sure, the city’s been redeveloped and gentrified and is a world away from the dingy days of Thatcher’s Britain, which saw it become the heartland of the early 80s goth scene. But for all its plush shopping centres and slick office spaces, home to wealthy finance firms, and for the way university life is now less The Young Ones and more the domain of the well-heeled – most often from overseas – who can afford to take on forty grand’s debt with only limited hope of a better job – it’s still a place where there is considerable poverty.

My generation was lied to: we were promised ‘graduate jobs’ which paid salaries well above the national average. Call me a failure: after a three-year degree in English literature – followed by an MA, and then a PHD, I failed to land a job which paid a ‘graduate’ wage and eventually, twenty-five years after graduation, I had my three student loans written off. Yes, I’d advocate staying poor as a career choice, naturally.

I digress somewhat, but the Leeds scene has always been, and continues to be, different. More recent years has seen the city’s sound move away from goth to noisy shit. This fashion started in the mid 00s, with the likes of That Fucking Tank, Pulled Apart by Horses, and These Monsters, and there was oddball stuff like Forward Russia! And This Et Al, and while lumped in with the post-rock trend. iLiKETRAiNS (later I Like Trains) always stood apart. Leeds has long been… well, different.

Forensics are different, too, and quintessentially Leeds, too. As they pitch it, they’re ‘Influenced by a desire to establish a sound that was as gritty as it was unrelenting’ and ‘have set straight their objective from the start; to put the world to rights as an unforgivably noisy 5 piece unafraid to incorporate influences from noise to hardcore punk, from black metal to garage rock’.

‘Dogtown’ is raw and biting. It’s built around a dingy, grainy garage-rock bassline, and during the verses, a sinewey guitar line twists through skewed angles in a fashion that calls to mind The Jesus Lizard, and, by some kind of default, Blacklisters. Then the chorus drives straight ahead with a racing urgency, the rabid punk vocals reminiscent of a screamier Wayne Barrett of Slaughter and the Dogs. It’s fierce.

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Deafkids / Kombi / Error Control – Boom, Leeds, 18th October 2026

Posted: 19 October 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Doors opening at 7 suggests an early start and early finish, and sure enough Error Control is on at 7:30. It’s very quiet in terms of attendance – so quiet initially I’m wondering if I’ve got the wrong night, but the beer’s decent enough and there’s some pounding, beat-heavy industrial noise pumping from the PA.

There’s a pattern emerging here: bands on respected underground / independent labels landing in Leeds to play to small but enthusiastic audiences play some of the most outstanding gigs I’ve witnessed all year. This was true of Might and Noisepicker when they played the Duck and Drake, and the same is true of Deafkids, who have brought Kombi, also from Brazil, along as the main support. It’s the tenth night of a world tour which has already seen them play mainland Europe, UK, and Ireland, with a stack more UK dates before heading back across Europe and onto Japan before a final haul round South America. These guys work hard. I do wonder if Angine de Poitrine’s long-sold out (and probably oversold) show at the O2 may have pulled some people away, and likewise the Ambient Leeds night at The Fox and Newt, but it doesn’t seem all that probable. So where the hell is everyone? Still, those present make up for number in terms of enthusiasm, and get to witness something special.

Error Control, playing blindfolded, creates a punishing wall of noise worthy of Merzbow. He begins by tentatively locating the monitor and draping the mic on it to generate a sustained feedback, which then goes through a succession of pedals and bits, which he tweaks and bashes to evermore brutal effect. It’s the kind of noise that’s both exhilarating and immersive, the harsh blast rendered even more intense by the use of only red lighting, which strobes. As he climbs up onto his bench in front of the stage, a potential health and safety nightmare reveals itself, but he gradually returns to the ground, where he proceeds to hail his pedal board onto the floor, and the set ends abruptly while he’s standing on the pedalboard and everything cuts out.

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Error Control

It’s only after I get home that not only have I seen him perform in person once before, but that performing with …(something) ruined, we’ve also featured alongside one another at two virtual gigs during lockdown.

Kombi’s set is a fine example of exploratory, experimental music, which reveals different facets as the set progresses. Billowing dark ambient with guttural growls gives way to fractured guitar and crackling contact work, a convergence of avant-garde and industrial. On the third piece, he unleashes Sunn O))) -like power chord drone. The second half of his set is a continuous extended piece built around dank loops and drones and wailing feedback, whereby the low frequencies bother the bowels and the shrill squall of treble terrifies the eardrums.

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Deafkids are having some technical issues and start twenty minutes later than advertised. Oh, but they’re more than worth the wait. And if they’re disappointed by playing to around twenty-five people, they don’t let it show, and their set is an absolute blinder.

They’ve not only captured the sound and feel of new album, CICATRIZES DO FUTURO (SCARS OF THE FUTURE), but take it to a whole other level live. Not for the first time, I’m amazed that there are just two guys up there: with a combination of pre-recorded drum loops, prerecorded and live guitar and extraneous noise loops, infinite delay on everything, especially the vocals, and some truly remarkable drumming, they conjure a dense, powerful sound, dominated by a thunderous barrage of percussion.

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Marian Sarine’s drumming is something to behold, often playing the congas with one hands while working his way around snare, toms, and cymbals with a stick, effortlessly switching to two sticks, and occasionally two hands. He smiles a lot, too. The resulting battery lands like Test Dept meets Swans, but with some techno breaks and a Latin twist. Oh, and there’s some looped beatboxing, too. Because they need more beats. It all builds to a head-shredding wall of noise. This ultra-percussive explosion is paired with abstract guitar work and vocals swathed in cavernous reverb and endless echo. It’s totally hypnotic, propulsive.

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With so much percussion, it’s got groove. It’s techno, trance, dub, shoegaze, and noise rock all at once. And some flute. It all makes for an intense fifty minutes. And it’s all done by ten past ten, which is ideal on a Sunday night.

Strange Pink / Flesh Planet / JUKU / The Bricks – The Fulford Arms, York, 11th October 2026

Posted: 13 October 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

I reckon I’ve probably said that both The Bricks and JUKU are my favourite current York band in the last couple of years. How can both things be true? Well, essentially because it’s too close to call. But that means that even without Strange Pink headlining, tonight’s lineup is guaranteed to be killer, one not to be missed. It also means that this is a face-off… who will win?

On the other side of town, GANS are playing at The Crescent. No doubt off the back of their supporting Pixies at The Barbican, they’ve won some new fans, but this is definitely the pick of the live action tonight, with four quality bands for a fiver – yes, a FIVER! – less than the price of a pint. It’s madness, particularly given that every act on the bill is individually worth way more than that.

The Bricks are headline quality on any night, and this is no exception. If I’m not mistaken, it’s been a couple of months since they’ve ventured out, and it seems that Gemma Kennedy has been building some pent-up energy and tension during that time, meaning that tonight, she’s on fire, not only with a commanding vocal performance, but a dominant stage presence, which sees her kick, lunge, stomp, and charge back and forth with barely a moment to breathe. They open with ‘Icarus’, and it’s clear from the very start that they’re on peak form – not that they have any other level of form, but tonight they seem to find an extra level. ‘Snake’ provides the slower segment after a new song which Gemma describes as their ‘indie’ song. ‘Modern Mirror’ powers home as a scratchy anti-AI anthem. She lines up the sheets with the lyrics to second new song, ‘Life Lesson’, where The Fall meets Hole. It’s mint – of course. But not a Polo, the mint with a hole – it’s definitely at least Extra Strong or XXX. Because they’re never anything less than awesome.

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The Bricks

A JUKU set feels like less of a gig than an event, and if we’re following the mint comparison, these guys are the Fisherman’s Friend mints of music. They don’t play frequently, but when they do… woah. What they do is full throttle rock ‘n’ roll, and they slam down riff after riff, a relentless riff machine, and while Naomi’s as cool and nonchalant as you like at the mic, Dan’s off in the back going full psycho Neanderthal, and the drummer and lead guitarist are just getting on with it, standing as if in the eye of a storm as a sonic maelstrom tears from the stage. The strolling swagger of ‘Hot Mess’ follows a blistering ‘What’ Penultimate song ‘Out of Control’ is straight up 90s grunge, but at 120 decibels and a hundred miles an hour. They’re not reinventing rock ‘n’ roll, by any means. But they are rediscovering the power of the volume control. Between them and The Bricks, my favourite York band remains a solid tie – but JUKU are by far the loudest York band, and they are an absolute rush.

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Juku

Where do you go from here? They’re not a band you’d want to Follow… unless you’re Flesh Planet. They’re kinda grunge, kinda noise rock, a bit industrial, and boast an immense bass sound… and an immense sound overall. The sound is dense and textured, and the arrangements are laced with synths which add depth and a certain smoothness, and it’s crisp and tight but with serrated edges. The bassist takes much of his inspiration from Lemmy, both sonically and visually. Cool: if you’re going to draw on influences, why not take your lessons from true legends? Here, we move from mints to wine-tasting analogies, because Flesh Planet offer a spicy blend that’s rich, dep, and dark, with hints of later Depeche Mode, Alice in Chains, NIN and Filter all in the mix The singer’s got a baggy, stretched, fluffy jumper and bleached hair, and clearly loves Kurt Cobain, but the vocals offer hints of Brian Molko when he’s not being screamy. But they’re so much more than an influence pic ‘n’ mix band. They’ve not only got some stomping tunes, but a tangible chemistry and a rare, raw energy. They’ve barely been going eighteen months, and shows like this should see them playing to substantially larger audiences in no time.

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Flesh Planet

And then there’s Strange Pink -featuring local(ish) legends Sam Forrest and Dom Smith. It’s been a fair while since the days of Nine Black Alps, but Forrest hasn’t been idle in the intervening years, currently fronting both noisy grunge duo Sewage Farm and Strange Pink, a quintessential grunge trio who take their cues from Sonic Youth and Nirvana. ‘Seventeen’ is a sad nostalgia song that brings the perfect balance of slackerism and the poppier end of Nirvana’s sound, and encapsulates everything that’s great about Strange Pink. As seasoned musicians, they understand the nature of the dynamic of the power trio, and the fact that there’s no space for a weak link or to carry anyone, and sure enough, they’re each on it, the sound driven by Dom’s powerhouse drumming. Holy hell, that man give it his all and then ten per cent. This is how it’s done.

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And to see four acts of this quality, where not only the standard but the energy – and the volume – is maintained throughout the night, is an intense experience.

Ritual Error – Terminal with Benefits

Posted: 11 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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25th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Two years on from their debut, Dial in the Ghost, London noisemongers Ritual Error are cack with an album which they threaten ‘takes the band in a meaner, more angular, direction’, defined by ‘Abrasive bass, shrill guitars, frantic and precise drumming, everything sounds like it’s gonna fall apart. And for the sickos: howled lyrics about sexual alien abductions, an island state obsessed with 12-foot immigrants, and booking agents who turn themselves into tattoos to please their clients. Plus, a shit tonne of JG Ballard references!’

As a huge Ballard fan myself, this only adds to the appeal. The thing that’s struck me about his writing in recent years – particularly his later works – is that it’s only grown in relevance. The rise of the flag shaggers last year – ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ as the racist shitheads behind festooning every lamppost with national flags branded it – compelled me to revisit Ballard’s final novel Kingdom Come. Published in 2006 – yes, twenty years ago – it’s study of rising fascism in the context of rampant consumerism and materialistic boredom felt like reading news reportage as much as a novel.

It’s an inescapable fact that we live in the weirdest, scariest, and darkest of times, and I’ve suggested before that the making of noise is perhaps one of the last rational methods of dealing with the world as it now is, and Ritual Error seem to fully embrace this idea on Terminal with Benefits.

The jerky, jolty, lurchy ‘songs’ are interspersed with brief interludes, untitled passages mere seconds in duration, plus the five-minute parenthetical ‘instrumental’ which sits in the middle of the album. Yes, Terminal with Benefits embraces all of the difficult bends in the roads, the awkwardness and the resistance. I begin to wonder if there are even any benefits to the terminal status of our societal decline.

‘Tapeworm’ is a gnarly mess of distortion and anguish, and lunges into Shellac territory in no time. Great! But also ‘woah!’ This is some gnarly, heavy shit, an abrasive blast of discord. ‘Hung Up On a Clown’ is a lurching, psychotic blast of disorientated confusion, staggering hither and thither and calling to mind Leeds’ finest, Blacklisters.

Noise rock has been around for a while now, but you know you’re hearing the best of it when it makes your stomach lurch and you feel a bit queasy and vaguely dizzy, and perhaps even a bit stressed and a sense of bewilderment closes in from different angles. With the looping guitar parts and surrounding racket, the sense of overwhelm and anxiety arrives early while listening to Terminal with Benefits.

‘Domestic Pattern’ is a truly jolting assault which stars a bit juddery, then goes totally askew. And it only gets messier. And messy is the word. This is one fucked-up shit moras of noise, with slanted skewed guitars – not metallic or distorted, but clean and trebly.

‘Family Plot’ is Shellac amped up to the point of queasiness, and reminiscent of a slew of gnarly 90s acts, and the swaggering swing of ‘(Instrumental)’ (which isn’t an instrumental at all) hits hard. The same is true of this album as a whole, a work of noise rock par excellence.

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Watch: ‘Platform Decay’ by Coilguns

Posted: 10 October 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Swiss noise-rock collective COILGUNS today drop a visualizer video for “Platform Decay,” the latest single from their forthcoming fifth studio album Everything We Love, We Destroy, due out November 6 via Humus Records.

Following recent singles ‘Peace Trader,’ ‘Carbon Magic’ and ‘Everything We Love, We Destroy,’ the new track finds COILGUNS turning their attention towards the increasingly broken state of the internet, while celebrating the hackers, geeks and activists fighting to keep the digital world independent.

The band comments: “Hopelessly witnessing the systemic enshittification of the internet made us want to celebrate the hackers and geeks that are fighting to keep the digital world independent. In times when reliable information has become a rare and questionable value, we’re constantly confronted with violent news, sometimes not knowing why we’re getting to read it, nor knowing how to determine its level of reality.”

Rather than surrendering to that digital chaos, ‘Platform Decay’ becomes something of an anthem for what the band describe as the “modern pirates of our digital oceans,” driven by an insistent vocal refrain and the raw, physical urgency at the heart of the new record.

Musically, COILGUNS see the track as perhaps the clearest representation yet of where the band stands today.

“This song is probably the clearest example of what Coilguns sounds like today. Every member’s personality found its way into it, yet it doesn’t really sound like anything we’ve released before. It somehow brings together everything we’ve learned over the years while opening another door stylistically.”

That evolution is also hidden within the track’s details. Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe, The Armed) contributed additional production, including the song’s pulsating synth textures, while an old, beautifully out-of-tune hand-pumped harmonium discovered during the guitar sessions found its way into the recording.

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Tour Dates
25.11 – Utrecht, NL
26.11 – Brussels, BE
28.11 – Antwerp, BE
29.11 – Tilburg, NL
02.12 – Cologne, DE
04.12 – Hamburg, DE
05.12 – Berlin, DE
06.12 – Munich, DE
12.12 – Lausanne, CH (Release Show)

2027 Tour Dates
13.02 – Annecy, F – Le Brise Glace
28.02 – Brighton, UK – Green Door Store
01.03 – London, UK – Moth Club
03.03 – Nottingham, UK – The Angel
04.03 – Birkenhead, UK – Future Yard
05.03 – Glasgow, UK – Stereo
06.03 – Newcastle, UK – Lubber Fiend
07.03 – Manchester, UK – SOUP
14.03 – Madrid, ES – Wurltizer Ballroom
16.03 – Lisbon, PT – Casa Capitao
17.03 – Porto, PT – Ferro Bar
18.03 – Vigo, ES – Master Club
19.03 – Bilbao, ES – Bilborock

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Photo: Andy Ford

Bombstrap – Big Enemy

Posted: 24 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Tartarus Records – 2nd October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Sometimes, and album comes crashing in and you feel its impact hard. It’s not so much an album as a massive detonation. A work that redefines its genre. An album that blows the top off our head.

Big Enemy by Bombstrap is that album. It’s s throbbing, gnarly, primitive punk album. So what’ s special about that? Bombstrap are special, in presenting a skin-peeling, furious rage what hurts. It’s not in any way refined or pretty, it’s raw and gritty and it’s real.

According to their bio, they were ‘born inside Rotterdam’s anarchist Poortgebouw community in 2025’and ‘have quickly established themselves as one of the most uncompromising new names in underground hardcore. Split between Manchester and Rotterdam, the four piece channels nihilism, black alchemy, and ultraviolence into a feral sound that owes as much to No Trend and Total Abuse as it does to a complete rejection of authority and conformity’.

They describe Big Enemy as ‘a blast of caustic, explosive hardcore delivered with ruthless precision’, and add that ‘Fueled by nihilism and anarchic conviction, the album is a sonic bullet aimed squarely at the heart of a corrupt society, uncompromising, abrasive, and impossible to ignore’. It’s hard to argue.

On the album’s second track, ‘Master Alchemist’, they step up and turn everything up to the max, and there’s no letup from hereon in. This is an album that grazes and cuts hard. Some of the bruising, raging noise belongs to the spirit of the early 90s – not just grunge, but riot grrl – but equally, Bombstrap belong the domain of hardcore punk and noise rock, and Big Enemy s a rabid and positively feral scream. This is an angry, explosive work. Every track is killer – and a pure distillation of nihilistic punk rage. ‘Machhiavellianism’ is, like half of the tracks on Big Enemy, well short of two minutes long – in fact, it’s only a second over one minute – and in that time they bring punk energy and a hundred miles an hour. There’s more than a dash of The Dead Kennedys to ‘Bakhmut’, and the final track, ‘Poppy Seeds’ is manic and packs a swaggering rock ‘n’ roll riff.

Big Enemy isn’t just a metaphorical ‘fuck you’ to the big enemy in all its forms – big government, corporations, billionaires, and all the rest, but a literal one, with a raging, exasperated ‘fuck you’ being a common refrain across the album’s ten tracks. And too right: sometimes, there are no other words that do the job, and all there is, is to scream out the most primal of invective. Big Enemy is Bombstrap telling it like it is. No bullshit, no pretence, Bombstrap are the real deal.

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Watch: ‘Blind Smile’ by Cor De Lux

Posted: 15 September 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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This Friday sees the release of Year of the Horse, the Ipecac debut from exciting new signings Cor de Lux, which very much gets the Aural Aggravation vote.

Across nine songs, the Kill Devil Hills quartet balances post-hardcore urgency, shoegaze bliss, and guitar-driven catharsis. Recorded and produced by J. Robbins (War on Women, Mary Timony), Year of the Horse preserves the raw chemistry that defines the band while pushing their songwriting into sharper, more immediate territory.

‘Blind Smile’, the track described by Loud Women as “bright, melodic and eccentric” now has a music video. About the video, Dawn says, “The video is about someone stuck in a world of complacency. It’s her journey to break free and show color to the world around her. Much like the meaning of the song it’s about being your true self.”

“The blind man smile, the deaf laugh for all to hear, to be so brave, you can’t hear anyone.”

Watch the video here:

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Photo: Bobo Grunwald

Watch: ‘Unsound Hero’ by 30,000 Monkies

Posted: 13 September 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Belgium’s most unpredictable noise-rock troublemakers 30,000 Monkies have premiered their new single .Unsound Hero’.

Taken from the band’s forthcoming album Super Rebound, due September 18 via Fvn Kvlt Records, ‘Unsound Hero’ trades instant impact for a six-minute descent into tension, melancholy and crushing sludge.

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The band explains: “‘Unsound Hero’ is about almost wandering off to the dark side when hostile forces keep pushing all the wrong buttons. Unlike a lot of other tracks on the album, this one starts with a slow-burning intro. We had fun layering some deep melodic vocals with uncanny, autotuned choirs, trying to increase the tension with every added layer.”
But restraint was never going to last forever.

“Eventually, of course, we wanted to put the hammer down—BAM! After this, the hero drifts completely off the map, left with nothing but two clean guitars, screaming into an empty space. But then all of a sudden—BAM!—another hammer, arriving unexpectedly, used by our hero to flatten everything in his path once and for all: a reluctant but absolute obliteration for anyone who left him no choice.”

For more than a decade, 30,000 Monkies have occupied a unique place within the European underground. Emerging from the Belgian noise-rock scene, the band built their reputation through a string of increasingly adventurous releases that balanced cathartic chaos with an unmistakable sense of fun. From the dizzying riff storms of Somewhere Over The Painbow to the wild experimentation of I Ate Myself To Grow Twice As Big and HONESTY INTEGRITY FRIENDSHIP PASSION, the band have consistently followed their own path.
With Super Rebound, they may have finally arrived at the destination they have been chasing all along.

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Cor de Lux – Year of the Horse

Posted: 8 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Ipecac Recordings – 18th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

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.

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Photo: Olivia Howe

Superføkk – Superføkk!

Posted: 2 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Fysisk – 4th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The line ‘here we are now, entertain us’ from Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is on which has come to resonate with me more powerfully in recent years than it ever did at the time. It’s a sad fact that – and I like to think of it as being through no fault of my own – my attention span isn’t what it was, and I’m no longer quite as patient as I was. I can still listen to a twenty minute instrumental without any issue, but have to be in the frame of mind to do so. But then, as far back as 2018, Forbes reported that 24.14% of songs were skipped within the first five seconds by users of Spotify, some 29% skip in the first ten, and that increases to a 35.05% chance of a skip within the first 30 seconds. I very much doubt that we’ve grown more patient in the last eight years. An article published earlier this year at Mixreflect detailed the reasons listeners skip, and gave practical solutions like ‘How long should a song intro be on Spotify?’ with advice including ‘The practical target is 8 to 12 seconds for pop, hip-hop, and R&B; up to 20 seconds for rock and indie if something is actively developing throughout.’

It’s twenty-six seconds before the vocals start on the single edit of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. The intro to one of my favourite singles of all time, ‘Alice’ by The Sisters of Mercy occupies the first minute of its three and a half minute duration. And how long is the fade-in on ‘India’, the opening track on the eponymous debut album by The Psychedelic Furs? All very different songs, but each a classic in its own right. Are we really in a place where most people would simply skip before things got going? Instant gratification is one thing, but there is so much to be said for a good build-up.

Thankfully, there are musical fields where a slow-build and an unravelling over time is appreciated, and Superføkk – pitched as ‘a bursting new raptus project that shoots off in inexplicable directions’ which is ‘neither background listening nor pop music’ they’re described as having ‘a foot in many camps’ and ‘aim[ing] to break down established genre conventions and create a sound that is distinctly their own…. drawing inspiration from jazz/noiserock, electronica, and no-wave’. And their debit album contains just three tracks, the shortest of which is six minutes long (there is a four-minute radio edit, but I doubt that it’ll get much airplay on the likes of Radio 1 or Kiss FM, or that it’s going to convince the Spotify casuals to stick around, not that the algorithm is likely to insert it amidst a lengthy cycle of Taylor Swift and Charlie XCX or whatever.

And so it is that ‘Grønn’ provides our introduction to Superføkk, and it may be brief (in comparative terms’, but it packs plenty in. It’s jazz in that cacophonic sense, horns blaring and doing so simultaneously in all directions – not smooth or noodly, but an instant riot – before an extended atmospheric post-rock passage in the middle before everything goes off at once, giving us an expansive post-rock surge topped with the most extravagant sax break. The twelve-minute ‘River Igjennom’ is remarkably light and easy going for the most part, but around three minutes in, the levels of tension explode with frenetic drumming and strains of the most demented fretwork colliding with crazed sax chaos, and it culminates on some kind of huge prog-like grand finale which on the one hand seems entirely incongruous, but on the other, perfectly fitting. I can’t say I’m entirely into it. And then there’s ‘Piggeple’, another twelve minute multi-segmented opus.

Around the mid-point, it drops down to a spare bass, squalling synth, and processed-sounding vocals, and it’s only after this that things really seem to kick off, with a locked-in drum beat, throbbing, insistent bass, and some crunky guitar dischord. Finally, the noise-rock element is freed! And they do go all-out in the final minutes.

When they write that ‘Superføkk is neither background listening nor pop music’, but that it’s ‘immediate and danceable, but also unhinged, hard-boiled, improvised, and idiosyncratic’, they’re mostly accurate. There are some deep bass-driven grooves buried in the mix here, but the chances of me actually dancing it any of it are non-existent.

Recent weeks and months have delivered some truly outstanding – not to mention angry, bleak, nihilistic, and highly political – noise rock releases, perhaps most notably from Chat Pile, Kings Sans, and Remote Viewing, and each has hit hard and resonated in a deep and powerful way. Superføkk (which continually reminds me of Superbock, which is great stuff) lands differently. Not only is it largely instrumental, its noise-rock elements are blended – and at times buried low – amidst an array of experimentalism, and an emphasis on the warped jazz leanings of the composition. But, being as hectic as it is, it’s no less tense that the aforementioned noise-rock works. In fact, there are moments which are little short of dizzying, and you wonder if your brain might burst.

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