Posts Tagged ‘Punk’

Album review and video exclusive: ‘I Cocked My Gun And Shot My Best Friend’ and ‘Hashish (The Yelling Song)’ by ShitNoise

Posted: 19 August 2024 in Albums, Previews and Editorial, Recommended Streams and Videos, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 11th September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

For those unfamiliar with ShitNoise, their bio describes them as ‘a noise punk band hailing from Monte-Carlo (Monaco). Formed in February 2022, the band has undergone several lineup changes. Currently, it consists of Aleksejs Macions on vocals and guitar, Vova Dictor on guitar, and Paul Albouy on drums.’ What’s more, they reckon their third album, I Cocked My Gun And Shot My Best Friend, ‘showcases their most energetic and mature work to date… Departing from their previous noise-centric style, the band blends grungy guitar riffs, metal-influenced double-kick drums, and a more polished production. The album explores themes of confronting the harsh realities of society and the lasting psychological impact of traumatic events. Through gritty soundscapes and stream-of-consciousness lyrics, it paints a raw portrait of present-day existence and the enduring human spirit in the face of adversity.’

I’m often wary of bands and artists who claim to have matured: all too often it means they’ve gone boring, that they’ve lost their fire and whatever rawness, naivete, edge, that made them stand out, drove them to make music in the first place. But these things are relative, and ShitNoise isn’t just a gimmicky moniker, but a fair summary of what they do. Here, they’ve stepped up from no-fi racket to lo-fi racket and evolved from the trashy punk din with dancey and electronic elements that at times sounded like a Girls Against Boys rehearsal recorded on a Dictaphone, toward a more wide-ranging and experimental approach to noisemaking. As for the album’s title… well. Was the act an accident, one of stupidity, gross negligence, or intentional? Either way, as the adage goes, with friends like these… ShitNoise are certainly not the friend of sensitive sensibilities, or eardrums.

So sure, they’ve ‘matured’ inasmuch as they’ve broadened their palette, but in doing so, they’ve discovered new ways of creating sonic torture.

‘Ho-Ho! (No More)’ launches the album with shards of shrill feedback and distortion: it’s two and a quarter minutes of nails-down-a-blackboard tinnitus-inducing frequencies and deranged yelping that’s somewhat reminiscent of early Whitehouse, minus the S&M / serial killer shit. Not that I have a fucking clue what they are on about, and the noise is so mangled it’s impossible to differentiate any of the sound sources from one another – guitars sound like screaming synths, and there’s so much dirty mess in the mix everything sounds so broken you begin to wonder if your speakers are knackered.

Proving just how much they’ve ‘matured’, ‘Brown Morning’ barrels into churning noise driven by thunderous beats as the backdrop to a rappy / spoken word piece, after which the arrival of the fairly straightforward punk tune ‘Gum Opera’ feels like not only light relief, but somewhat incongruous. But then, in the world of ShitNoise, anything goes, as long as it’s noisy shit. And keeping on with the noisy shit, there’s the gnarly Jesus Lizard meets Melvins gone rockabilly slugging sludgepunkfest of the oxymoronic ‘Pleasant Guff’ to go at, and it’s abundantly clear that they’re absolutely revelling in following their curiosity in every direction when it comes to exploring any and all avenues of racketmongering. I Cocked My Gun is wild, and wildly divergent, stupid, chaotic, and fun.

If the off-kilter grunge of ‘X-Ray Phantom’, with its incidental piano tinkling along behind crunchy guitars hints at something approaching a kind of sensitivity – and a closet ability to write songs – ‘Endless Void’ demonstrates their capacity to step back from noise completely, and venture into near-ambient territories, and with remarkable dexterity.

But mostly, these deviances only serve to bolster the impact of the manic racketmaking which dominates the album, which brings us to the epic penultimate track, ‘Hashish (The Yelling Song)’ – a ball-busting seven-and-a-half-minute stoner-doom slammer that slaloms its way through some heavy drone and some explosive psychotic episodes… and we’re immensely proud to be able to present an exclusive premier of the video which accompanies this mammoth slab of sonic derangement right here:

Get it in your lugs. Let it permeate every cell. Bask in the insanity. With I Cocked My Gun And Shot My Best Friend, ShitNoise have really gone out on a limb, and while teetering on a precipice of madness, have proved that artistic fulfilment lies on the other side of mania. It’s a far more enjoyable place than the everyday in which we find ourselves of late, so why not dive on in?

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Watch: ‘Exit 55’ by Cascade Riot

Posted: 4 August 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Detroit, MI’s Cascade Riot (newly signed to PNWK Records) has released a video for the new single ‘EXIT 55’.

Watch the video here:

The single is the first new music from the band since the January release of the ‘Life In Venus’ EP, and will appear on the band’s forthcoming label debut full-length.

‘Exit 55’ showcases a new, heavier side while still retaining a level of familiarity. “The song is really just about being fed up with things and wanting to get away from it all”, says frontman Ryan Failla. “We wanted to release it as the first single because it represents a side musically we haven’t really displayed before. With this and the other new material we’re working on, we’re really trying to expand on what Cascade Riot can be.”

Cascade Riot was originally formed in 2015. After releasing their debut EP Code Red that same year, the band went on a 6 year hiatus before returning in 2022 with the single ‘Hypnotized’. They have been consistently churning out material ever since.

Consisting of Ryan Failla (Vocals/Guitar), Adam Brady (Bass), and Alex Brady (Drums), the members have a long history together that stretches back to when they were kids. Ryan and Adam first met in middle school and played together in various bands as teenagers, eventually recruiting Adam’s brother Alex as a drummer. Although they never made it out of the basement, the seeds of Cascade Riot were planted.

Delivering guitar driven tunes with a punky undercurrent and a penchant for melody, the band draws inspiration from rock music of nearly every era. Their music has been featured on “Chris DeMakes a Podcast” hosted by Chris DeMakes from Less Than Jake and “The Mike Herrera Podcast” hosted by Mike Herrera from MxPx and they have opened for such bands as Billy Talent and Belvedere.

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Photo: Alex Brady

Ruts DC – The Crescent, York, 18th July 2024

Posted: 21 July 2024 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Forty-five years on from the release of their debut album, The Crack, The Ruts – or Ruts DC as they subsequently became – as still going, and perhaps unexpectedly, they’ve been more prolific in the second half of their career than the first.

Having released two Electracoustic albums – stripped back versions of material from their back catalogue, they’re back on the road with this format, too. The trio seated in a line on the stage befits a band whose members are in their late sixties / early seventies. They’re done being ‘cool’ or staying ‘punk’: “punk’s dead”, Segs shrugs at one point during tonight’s set. It’s striking just how honest and open they are during the lengthy intros and meandering anecdotes which seem to spring spontaneously, often without punchlines or clear endings. These are off-the-cuff, unrehearsed, down the pub type chats, which provide some real insight into the workings of the band and its members. Unpretentious, grounded, it’s a joy to feel this kind of intimacy with a band of such longstanding who truly qualify – and it’s not a word I use often – as legends.

They’re a band at ease with one another and the audience, Ruffy particularly happy to be back in his home town and regaling us with a lengthy tale about his early life, his father, and shoplifting out of necessity.

Not being able to get out so much lately, I have to pick my nights out carefully and strategically, and I had been in two minds about this one, for a number of reasons. But within minutes, it became apparent that coming down had been the right decision. Y’see, music can reach parts that practically nothing else can. Once comes to associate songs, bands, albums, with people, places, life experiences. They become indelibly connected, for better or worse. And The Ruts are a band who carry substantial emotional, reflective weight for me on a personal level. Of course, this is about me rather than the band, but this is a contemplation on how we engage with music and how songs and bands, become the soundtrack to our lives, and it’s something we only really realise in hindsight. And I feel that sharing the details of this complex and intimate relationship with a band is part of a dialogue we need to open up.

I was around thirteen or fourteen when I began hanging round the second-hand record shop where I would subsequently become the Saturday / holiday staff. The owner was – to me, being fifteen years my senior – an old punk, and he introduced me to a shedload of bands, and would air-bass around the shop to ‘In a Rut’, a song he would also cover with his band. This song – indubitably one of THE definitive punk singles – would become an anthem to me in my life, a song I always play to remind myself to get my shit together when times are tough. If punk has a solid link with nihilism, ‘In a Rut’ provides a counterpoint, as a rare positive kick up the arse. It’s a song I play when I need to remind myself that I need to get my shit together. It must surely be one of the greatest songs of all time. And what a debut! And that was even before ‘Babylon’s Burning’…

The first time I met my (late) wife’s dad – who died in 2003 at the age of 50 – he was blasting The Ruts and Rage Against the Machine on his car stereo, and I knew immediately we’d get on well. And we did. He was a grumpy fucker who hated anything establishment, and had great taste in music.

And so The Ruts and Ruts DC are a band who run a thread through my life. I find it hard to hear them without a pang of sadness, but ultimately, they’re an uplifting experience, and this is so, so true of tonight’s show.

‘Music Must Destroy’ makes for a strong opener and provides an opening for a not-quite anecdote about number-one fan Henry Rollins (another hero of mine and my wife’s, we got to see The Rollins and numerous spoken word performances, including one which included an expansive tale of his obsession with The Ruts and how he came to front the band at their reunion fundraiser for guitarist Paul Fox in 2007), who provided additional vocals to this, the title track of their 2016 album. It provides an early reminder of the fact that they’re more than merely a heritage band, and that they’ve always been, and continue to be, political.

‘West One’ and ‘Love in Vain’ land early, and the range and quality of the material stands out a mile. The set spans punk, reggae, rockabilly, anthems… and they have songs that mean something, too.

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One thing that sets Ruts DC’s acoustic(ish) sets apart isn’t that the lead guitar has some pedals and tweaks and that it’s not a straightforward acoustic strum, but the fact the arrangements rightly bring the details to the fore. Listen to The Crack and it’s apparent that the basslines are special. And paired down, you can really hear everything that’s going on. Their material is so much more than the lumpen three-chord thud of regular pub-rock derivative punk. They switch slickly into dub mode, with echoed rimshots and booming heavy bass, and the sound – and musicianship – is outstanding.

‘Something That I Said’ arrives as the penultimate song of set one, before closing with a new song, ‘Bound in Blood’ that’s a strong new wave cut. And suddenly, with the introduction of an electric guitar, it’s louder, too.

The second set is more electric, but still minimal in terms of arrangement, and stripped back: ‘Dope for Guns’ shows the song’s solid structure. It’s a rapturous experience to hear them powering through ‘Staring at the Rude Boys’ and ‘Babylon’s Burning’ towards the end of the set, and then to hear them segue ‘In a Rut’ with a full-lunged rampant chorus of Neil Young’s ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ was truly rapturous. Again, there’s a personal element here: a song I associate with my wife, and a song she in turn inherited from her dad, I found myself shedding a tear at hearing a great song well-played. It wasn’t just a token gesture to enhance and pad the set: they meant it and felt the power of the sentiment. And right now, we need to cling to that. These are dark and fucked-up times.

They ramped things up to slam in a fully electric, fully punk rendition of ‘Criminal Mind’ to draw the curtain on the night. And what a night. And what a band.

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While they do still thrive on their early material, and do it justice, they have so much more to offer, too, and significantly, they’re not attempting to recreate the experience of the late 1970s with some sad old punk nostalgia trip. They’re clearly happy onstage – that is to say, loving the fact they’re up there, still going, and playing these songs. They’ve every reason to be: tonight, they deliver solid gold.

Hearse Pileup – Realise

Posted: 15 July 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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2nd July 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Unless I’m looking in all the wrong places, one genre you don’t seem to find many emerging acts coming through in is hardcore punk. Reissues of vintage bands – even minor cult acts who were criminally overlooked in their time – are coming (back) to light with releases on Southern Lord and the like, but new true hardcore punk acts are few and far between, with many presenting a more metal

This is raw, fast, gritty, and angry. And political. ‘Realise’ is a fist-pumping roar of rage, positively foaming at the mouth with the fury of betrayal. Told from the position of the punter for whom the penny’s dropping that they’ve been lied to and done over, ‘Realise’ rails against the system and the way in which politics serves politicians rather than the people. As they put it, ‘Writing with the credo “Shit’s fucked – call it out”, the song highlights that politics doesn’t, and cannot, happen only once every five years. Obviously, these guys get it, but it still shocks me that there’s such a thing as working-class Tories. They seem to proliferate in run-down rural areas, places like Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. Many of these regions are agricultural, and the (ageing) populations have bought the myth that the migrant workers picking and sorting veg for minimum wage – the same migrant workers who serve them their coffees and also service their health in evermore dilapidated hospitals – are stealing their jobs. Those would be the jobs they’re retired from, and would never have done on account of the pay and conditions being poor. But this is the way of capitalism – blaming the most vulnerable for your own plight while aspiring to higher things and buying into the idea of trickle-down economics is simply pissing on the head of the person on the next rung down because the person on the rung above is pissing on you, and because they’re on the higher rung, it must be right. It is, of course, a complete con. Shit is, indeed, fucked.

The bass-rattling blast of ‘Grindstone,’ which first surfaced a few years ago, finally makes it to an EP, and it perfectly summarises the wearying, dulling, life-robbing effects of drudge labour and the living hell of working all hours and multiple shit jobs to make ends not even meet. ‘I got my nose to the grindstone every day / I’m grinding so hard I grind my face away / I leave blood on the floor wherever I go / If I grind much more I’ll be grinding bone’ paints a visceral picture and take the notion of working one’s finger to the bone to its logical conclusion. This is precisely what proponents of capitalism and governments who support it want. A people too busy killing themselves with work just to stay alive hasn’t the time or the energy to protest, to uprise, to vote. Notably, the main parties all spoke of rewards for ‘hard-working families’, reinforcing the idea that both families and hard work are both normal and desirable goals. This is clearly false: not everyone is suited to family life, and rewards should not be based on one’s level of conformity, and a question I have asked elsewhere is why should work be hard? It should be enough to simply work, to earn a day’s pay, and still have the energy – physical and mental – to have a life outside it. Promoting the idea that hard work is something we should want to spend our lives on is simply another means of oppression. And yes, making art is work: art and culture are essential, and the existence of cave paintings is testament to the fact that the need for art is in our DNA. So fuck the pitch that work has to be long hours grinding out shit earning a pittance to fund the CEO’s multi-million pound package as if it’s somehow noble. It’s not: it’s exploitation, pure and simple.

This brings us to the final cut, ‘We’re All Going to Hell’, is a full-throttle rabble rouser with a strong chorus. It’s simple, direct, unpretentious. Much as I admire poeticism in songwriting, every form has its time and place, and Hearse Pileup are agitators, looking to shake people awake. You might think their fanbase would be young and left-leaning, but so many who have grown up under the last government are prematurely world-weary, dead on their feet, and apathetic to the whole circus. These are the people Hearse Pileup are reaching out to. And for this purpose, they don’t need to be subtle, but instead deliver a sonic slap round the chops. And with this EP, that’s precisely what they deliver.

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Hearse Pileup Artwork

Machine Mafia – Killzones EP

Posted: 11 July 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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5th July 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Sometimes, I really do feel as if my brain is my enemy. Word association and wordplay are a particularly frequent and annoying curse. Oftentimes, I keep this to myself, but midway through listening to this, it struck me, completely at random, that Killzones isn’t a million miles away from Calzone, at least when written down. So why share this? A problem shared, and all that, for one. But as much as anything, I felt the urge to purge, or moreover to crack open the challenges that present themselves as part of the creative process. Writing – and finding something new and interesting to say – about music, day in, day out, is a challenge in itself, without other factors.

Seemingly, the recording of this EP proved rather less challenging for its makers, who came together and developed it swiftly and fluidly –although the same can’t be said for listening to it. That’s by no means a criticism. In a climate where the airwaves are jammed solid with anodyne sameness and slickly-produced beige sonic slop disguised as raw or edgy on account of some explicit content and some choice language that requires beeps or asterisks in the mainstream media, anything that does something different offers a welcome challenge in the way many pit themselves against the Great North Run or similar. We’ve grown accustomed to everything being delivered neatly-packaged and pre-digested, and feeling like following a recipe from Hello Fresh makes us a Michelin chef. Collectively, we’ve forgotten how to chew – meaning that this will either kick-start your metabolism or simply make you spew if you’re unaccustomed to anything that’s this high-fibre. Just look at that cover art. It’s dark, grainy, uncomfortable. It’s the perfect encapsulation of the music it accompanies.

Machine Mafia is quite the collaborative paring: Adam Stone of gritty northern grimsters Pound Land and Jase Kester of ever-evolving experimental noisemakers Omnibael / Omnibadger have come together to do something different. Very different.

As Jase explained to me, the EP features ‘no live instruments, leaning into the way dub reggae was so embraced by punk right in the early days.’ And there’s no question that it has both – simultaneously – the spaciousness of The Ruts (D.C) and the density of early PiL. It’s a formidable combination, that’s for sure.

The title track assembles sampled snippets as its foundation, drawing parallels with the collaging methods of Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, evolved from William Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s late-50s tape experiments – in turn a progression from the cut-ups on paper. Atop of this slice ‘n’ splice selection of political speeches and an almost subsonic, floor-shaking bass, Stone delivers a mumbling, drawling semi-spoken spiel. It’s like Sleaford Mods on Ketamine, a heavy trudge of ever-degenerating sound which eventually collapses to a low-end buzz and a crisp sample that makes the pair’s political position clear through antithesis.

On ‘Faces’, scrapes of discord, distortion, and a thudding beat half-submerged in the mix grinds out the opening before a dark, dense bass groove starts a gut-shaking growl. The drawling, atonal vocals, too, are distorted and low in the mix, and I’m reminded of some of the more obscure Ministry offshoots witch Chris Connelly – the vibe is dingy, sleazy industrial, a bit early Pigface, and sounds like it was recorded in a damp mould-stained basement on a salvaged reel-to-reel.

The songs get slower and heavier – and longer – as the EP progresses. ‘I Am Not You’ comes on as if Dr Mix and The Remix had done dub, while ‘Lecture 0.3B’ goes all out on transforming a simple spoken-word piece into a cut-up tape experimental headfuck with loops and delays and effects galore, all laced with crackles of distortion and sonic degradation fuzzing and fading the edges. It lands somewhere between the JAMS, Max Headroom, and Throbbing Gristle’s ‘Hamburger Lady’ – weird, unsettling, dystopian, with near-familiar elements twisted and recontextualised in an ugly mash-up collage work.

Conceptually, Killzones is far from new – but then, there’s no claim to innovation here, explicitly drawing a line from the past. But the kind of reference points and influences in evidence here are not the ones you find often, if ever – independently, perhaps, but the whole point of intertextuality as a method of creating is the nexus of divergent touchstones and the way in which they’re combined. With Killzones, Machine Mafia deliver a crash course in experimental music 1976-1994. It’s a mangled, messy cognitive assault. It’s knowingly, and purposefully, difficult, unpleasant, and a complete creative success.

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The Virginmarys – Northwest Coast

Posted: 9 July 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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5th July 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The trajectory of the career of The Virginmarys has been an unexpected one. Starting out as a classic punk-rock power trio, they seemed to really seemed to find their niche and hit their stride when paired back to a two-piece. If the duo configuration has grown in popularity in recent years, there have equally been duos expanding their lineups.

For many acts, the cost of touring has rendered the minimal setup a necessity, but for many, it’s proved beneficial in other ways, too, compelling artists to really focus on their compositions. There is absolutely no space for a weak link or any slacking in a two-piece: there is simply nowhere to hide, and no space for skulking low in the mix adding the odd but of layering or texture.

To compensate for the lack of additional members, the strongest two-piece acts play louder, harder, determined to fill the space, and both players need to bring one hundred percent and combine to deliver something more than the sum of the parts.

The Virginmarys may not look or sound like an obvious choice of support act for The Sisters of Mercy, but The Sisters have a long history of selecting interesting and contracting tour buddies, from Public Enemy for an aborted US tour, to I Like Trains and Cubanate via Oceansize and drum-machine-driven grunge act La Costa Rasa. But contrasts tend to work well: who needs a goth band ripping off The Sisters supporting The Sisters? Conceivably one of the most cringe supports I ever had the excruciating agony of witnessing was Broken Bone, spectacularly wanky and 100% cliché industrial noise duo supporting Whitehouse. So. The Viringmarys aren’t goth and aren’t about to swerve that way, either, but no doubt they’ll have made some new fans along the way on their recent travels, and deservedly so. And those fans – and the older ones – won’t be disappointed by this new single offering.

‘Northwest Coast’ is the first single from their first album since becoming a two-piece, and it captures force of The Macclesfield power duo’s live performances, bringing a crunching riff and spadefuls of northern grit – without being dour and po-faced about chips and beans and tea, with cans of Boddingtons featuring in the video. Yep, for all of their travels, they’ve not lost sight of where they’ve come from, and this is certainly not a case of a band spending a week in the US and coming back singing in American accents. If anything, there’s an overt pride in their geographical roots, and they’re keeping it real. And it all works: it’s authentically and unapologetically rock ‘n’ roll, it’s got some swagger but arrives without any sense of superiority or arrogance. And it’s a proper, solid, stomping rock tune that kicks arse.

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Melt-Banana – 3 + 5

Posted: 30 June 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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A-Zap Records – 23rd August 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

There is truly only one Melt-Banana. And Melt-Banana boldly encapsulate all of the craziness that makes Japanese music so peculiar and unlike the music to emerge from any other place. Here in the west, we can, in truth, only marvel at it – all of it. Because it makes no sense. It’s a country of extremes, with hyper-pop culture dominating, and a sense of plasticness and artifice defining the mainstream. But then, Japan is also the home of the most extreme noise – Merzbow, Masonna, for example. It’s not just extreme sonically, but beyond words in terms of performance.

The pitch for this, their eighth album, informs us that ‘3 + 5’ synthesizes elements of a variety of Extreme Musics, Hyper-Pop, classic Punk, vintage Metal, and Noise. It’s informed by Japanese culture in general, and the subcultures of gaming, anime and homegrown underground music in particular. The album’s nine tracks have been crafted to maximize the independent appeal of each song (since so many listeners will be streaming and playlisting these songs). Each selection boasts its own unique charm and ideas that beg for repeated listening.’

I had the good fortune to witness their live spectacle here in York not so long ago, and they were everything anyone even vaguely aware of their work would expect: intense, noisy, crazy, and wildly entertaining.

They create music that fits with the bizarre incongruity of their name – abstract, humorous, combining elements that don’t – or shouldn’t – really sit together – somewhat surreal, patently absurd, but also perhaps a shade Pop Art. Put another way, everything all at once, tossed in a blender and blitzed, the output being like a bubbling hot smoothie or something.

They do have a tendency to favour short and fast, as recent taster track ‘Flipside’ reminded us, clocking in at a minute and fifty-six. It does happen to be the album’s shortest track, but then, the longest is under three-and-a-half, and the majority of the nine songs are around the two-and-a-half minute mark. That means that with a running time of around twenty-seven minutes, the album would comfortably fit on a 10” record.

For a moment, ‘Code’ hints at something spacious, experimental and electronic to open the album – before seconds later, all kinds of sonic mayhem erupt and chipmunk yelping vocal squeak over something that resembles Metal Machine Music played at double speed, before it takes a turn into space rock territory, but again, at twice the pace, with some prog flourishes and a bunch or bleeps and widdly synths all criss-crossing over one another at two hundred miles an hour. For anyone for whom this is their introduction to Melt-Banana, they’ll likely find themselves dizzy and completely bewildered as to wat the fuck they’ve just heard. It is, unquestionably, utterly deranged, and at doesn’t get much more quintessentially Japanese than this.

‘Puzzle’ is kind of a high-octane rock tune, at least at first – but then someone hits the accelerator and in a blink you’re on ‘Rainbow Road’ on the N64 Mario Kart after eating three bags of Skittles and you’re totally wired.

Hyper doesn’t really cut it. Even the more expansive instrumental segments of ‘Case D’ happen at about 600bpm, and it’s like listening to a prog album at 45rpm.

As I listen, I find myself typing faster and faster, as if I’ve sunk six cans of Red Bull while chomping on a whole packet of Pro Plus. My fingers are pale blurs against my black illuminated keyboard, and they’ve seemingly run away from my brain and are just frothing out words in response to the frantic mania pouring into my ears – no, not pouring, but being injected by 10,000-volts of electrical current into my brain via my eardrums.

‘Scar’ slams big guitar rock and skittish melodic pop together like a banging of heads. It sounds like music from a computer game or an animated movie. It sounds like music made in a fictional context. Because in real life, music like this couldn’t exist. And in the main, it doesn’t. Only Melt-Banana are demented enough to actually make it.

Penultimate track ‘Whisperer’ goes big on dance / rock crossover and actually slows to a pace that doesn’t feel like a synaptic twitch or a seizure, before ‘Seeds’ closes the album with a two-and-a-half minute frenzy which chucks everything into the mix.

The whole experience leaves you feeling giddy, dazed, amazed. 3 + 5 may not bring anything radical, new, or revelatory to the Melt-Banana oeuvre, but stands as a classic example of what they do – and it’s as ace as it is nuts.

AA

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Octavia Wakes – Maybe

Posted: 9 June 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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31st May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

There seems to be a proliferation of alternative rock acts emerging of late, many with female vocalists, which can only be a good thing. As the ‘Lips Can Kill’ tour, which saw Tokyo Taboo, Yur Mum, Pollypikpoketz, and Healthy Junkies team up to offer a package deal demonstrated, women can – and do – rock every bit as hard as men. Not that this should even be a topic in 2024. But it is, and since – despite Taylor Swift achieving true world dominance beyond even Madonna – women remain criminally underrepresented, especially in the rock and alternative fields, it’s a topic that should be tackled head-on, but not in a patronising, tokenistic way.

With ‘Maybe’, the last track from their debut EP, which they’ve been drip-feeding over the last eleven months, Nottingham quartet Octavia Wakes stand on their own merits. It’s a cracking tune, with bold, overdriven guitars stacked up-front as the vehicle for a strong, melodic and hooky vocal.

As is the case with so many great songs, it reminds me of something, but I can’t quite place it, and as such, ‘Maybe’ achieves that joyous blend of freshness and familiarity.

The bassline and guitarline at the start is reminiscent of Editors’ ‘Bullets’, but played at double speed, and the song positively fizzes with energy: it’s busy, urgent, grabbing, punky and catchy without being punk-pop. While lyrically, it’s pretty raw and feels personal, telling as it does, ‘the story of a male friend reacting poorly to being spurned, making the protagonist question their own decisions and how those choices make others see them… Along with the idea of being made out to be the bad guy whichever way the scenario plays out.’

Sometimes, you just can’t win. Unless, of course, you consider channelling that situation into something artistically strong. With ‘Maybe’, Octavia Wakes emerge triumphant – and maybe they’re ones to watch for more of.

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Glitchers / Eville / The Strand / Averno – The Fulford Arms, York, 20th May 2024

Posted: 22 May 2024 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Just the other night I was talking with someone about how sad it is that so many venues only manage to keep afloat by packing their bookings out with tribute acts. I do appreciate and understand the popularity of tribute acts: people like to hear songs they know while having a drink and a dance, and more often than not, the original artist is either no more, or only plays stadiums every six years with tickets costing over a hundred quid. But the proliferation of tributes, especially to acts still touring, feels so, so wrong: sure, the quality of musicianship required to be a tribute is high, but these are acts who make more off the work of an established act than original artists – and how do the original artists reach an audience when they’re struggling to push their way into view? And as for the acts who are defunct or deceased? Get over it. You missed them – or were lucky and saw them – move on, go and discover some contemporary acts. So, the public gets what the public wants, but for fuck’s sake, if only the public would open its eyes and ears and broaden its horizons beyond all that sale nostalgia shit. There are SO many outstanding artists around right now in every field, every genre – artists who would likely get their own tribute acts in tent, twenty years time, if people even knew that they existed.

Glitchers are a band who really will go to the furthest extreme to make people aware that they exist. While I’ve slated a few busking bands in the past – and rightly so, because the likes of King No-One and the all-time apex of shitness, Glass Caves are the kind of ‘band’ who busk because no-one in their right mind would book them, at least until they’ve built a ‘following’ by their street gigs. Glitchers are a very different proposition. It’s all about intent, about purpose. Glitchers’ busks are an act of protest as much as they’re vehicles of promotion, and they tell us tonight that no number of viral videos of police moving in to suit down their street performances boost their sales. So, to many, police shutdown efforts are amusing evidence of heavy-handed law enforcement (or something to celebrate if you’re a right-wing tosser), but the music gets overlooked. It’s a shame, because right now, we need voices of dissent to be heard while the government tramples and silences the already downtrodden who dare to speak out. And Glitchers don’t just speak out but scream rabidly about issues.

They’ve got a nice – and diverse – bill of bands supporting them tonight, starting with a couple of local bands before current touring support Eville, who are no strangers to the pages of Aural Aggravation, the initial reason I clocked this event and decided I should get down. After all, it’s not every day a band hauls its way up from Brighton to play a support slot at a £5 entry gig in York on a Monday night.

Averno look young even for a university band, but you have to admire their commitment, prioritising playing tonight over revision. I’ve always maintained that the social education and opportunities university provides are worth as much as the degree, and while they’re a bit rough in places, with some fairy ramshackle guitar work throughout, they showcase some decent original songs and a grungy punk energy. ‘Need’ is slow and lugubrious and after a hesitant start builds into a heavy, sludgy beast of a tune, and ‘Make Room’ is a bona fide banger. Unexpectedly, things got more indie and poppy as the set went on, but while delving into more personal territory, their confidence seemed to grow and they were good to watch.

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Averno

The Strand are another uni band, but honed and with a strong style and identity. Their sound is rooted in original 70s punk but with a modern spin and an arty edge, a bit Wire, a bit Adverts, a bit Iggy Pop – although their song about being bored isn’t an Iggy cover. It is, however, a top tune. Front man Evan Greaves bounces around on the spot a lot as they crank out three and four-chord stomps, and I find myself unexpectedly moved by their cover of Nirvana’s ‘Aneurysm’, even though they mangled the start rather – it so happens to be a favourite song of mine and they really give it some. It’s also quite heartening to witness bands playing the songs I was into when I was their age. It’s also impressive to witness their stand-in drummer – an immensely hard-hitter, she powers through the set with finesse, and everything just gels in this confident performance.

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The Strand

Talking of confidence, Eville simply ooze it. It’s clear from the second they take the stage that they’re going to perform like they’re headlining an O2 arena, whether they’re playing to 25 people of 2,500. They’ve got the tunes and the chops for the latter, that’s for sure.

Recent single ‘Monster’ lands as the second track and is the perfect showcase of their sound, blending monumentally weighty riffage, melody, and cross-genre details, with drum ‘b’ bass drums reminiscent of Pitch Shifter paired with a hefty chug of guitar and five-string bass in unison.

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Eville

Ditching the guitar after a few songs, Eva stalks and prowls the stage, and she’s got real presence, strong, assertive. And fuck me, they actually did it: they called for a moshpit and got the entire room going nuts. Blasting is with ‘Leech’, they sustain the intensity, with one fan crashing over the monitors and onto the stage not once but twice. They close with ‘Messy’, and it’s fair to say that they’ve delivered a set that’s all killer here, and there can be no doubt that they’ve won some new fans tonight.

Glitchers bring manic energy and a ton of gaffer tape. And knee pads. Even the knee pads have tape on. This is a band who simply cannot be contained. They don’t just play songs: they’re a full-on spectacle. Few bands go this all-out, and even fewer manage to pull it off: Arrows of Love and Baby Godzilla are the only names which make it to my extremely short list of bands this deranged, this wild, this intense in bringing unbridled mania to songs which explode in howls of feedback. I say songs, but they’re perhaps more accurately described as screaming sonic whirlwinds, industrial-strength punk with a dash of Butthole Surfers mania. This guy is all over the stage and everywhere all at once.

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Glitchers

They blitz their cover of ‘Helter Skelter’, and follow it with new single ‘Grow Up’, a song about toxic masculinity. It would be easy to poke fun at their being ‘right on’, but they’re on point and on topic every time, and they’re on the right side. Their anti-capitalist stance extends to their costs-only ticket pricing policy, and it’s obvious that they mean it, man. They also come across as being decent human beings. They’re a rare breed, it seems. And they’re simply a great band and wholly unforgettable live.

First and foremost, you go to see bands play life to be entertained. Tonight brought entertainment to the MAX. And all for a fiver. Grassroots forever! But also, don’t be surprised to see any of these guys in bigger venues in time.

Listen: ‘Safe and Warm’ by Mannequin Death Squad (feat. DZ Deathrays)

Posted: 2 May 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
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It’s a good day when two of our favourite Australian alternative acts come together to release a single, especially when that single represents the best of both, and comes on with a bustin’ cyclical riff reminiscent of Bleach-era Nirvana and packs everything into a magnificent no-frills, no-fat two-and-a-half minutes.

Today is that day, when Mannequin Death Squad unveil ‘Safe and Warm’ featuring DZ Deathrays.

It’s the nuts. Get your lugs round it here:

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