Posts Tagged ‘Review’

The Battery Farm – Your House Looks Spooky

Posted: 12 October 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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9th October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Manchester’s finest self-labelled gutter punks, The Battery Farm are back with their first release in almost two years. Despite having only started out in 2019, ‘Your House Looks Spooky’ is their seventeenth single. There have been three albums in that time, too. Still, in the time away, they’ve regrouped, refocused, and penned another album: you could hardly accuse them of slacking, especially when the first taste of said forthcoming album lands in the form of such a ball-busting punk blast.

It’s only a fraction early for Halloween, but since the supermarkets have been flogging sweets, skeletons, and pumpkins since August bank holiday, the timing is probably about right, in fairness. And despite the title, and the cover art, it’s not actually a Halloween-themed song. As ever, there’s a lot happening here, both musically and lyrically. They describe it as ‘A song about punching down, judgement and the importance of good home décor’. Seemingly unrelated matters, but they spin them together nicely, pinned to a gut-shaking, snarling bass and piton-pumping drums, which provide the foundations for driving guitars and a gritty vocal delivery.

And when it comes to punching down, it seems to be the in-thing right now. Everything’s shit: that’s a fact, not an opinion. But right-wing opportunists are swooping on it and making capital by blaming migrants and the poor. Yeah, those asylum seekers who aren’t allowed to work, and are given a sustenance allowance of pennies a day while living in ‘accommodation’ which is practically a prison? Farage and Robinson and the like – moneyed grifters who are living it large on donations – whip up outrage among the lowest-educated, lowest-paid, and / or benefit claimants, by telling them that these people are taking their jobs and are the reason their lives are shit. Yep, Yaxley-Lennon pleads for donations from these dupes from his sun lounger in Spain, and Farage… Farage – married to an immigrant – needs to just fuck off and doesn’t warrant any more column inches anywhere. We’ll not even start on Trump, the most corrupt piece of shit to ever hold the American presidency. To cut to the chase, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the worst of it is that the rich are doing so at the expense of the poor, as executive pay soars year on year while the workers who earn the money to fund those executive salaries receive below-inflation pay increases, year after year. Circuitously, but by a necessary detour, I arrive at the point: the rise to the top isn’t achieved by positive qualities, but by means of subtraction, and Battery Farm rail against all that shit by punching outwards, punching upwards, and punching hard with heartfelt fury against the system, the status quo.

Looping back to the cover art, the graffiti on the devastated, flame-wracked building is a statement in itself, and tells you where The Battery Farm stand. They’re the good guys, on the right side of history. They’ve got fire and passion in abundance, too.

The surprise here is just how accessible ‘Your House Looks Spook’ is. It’s no radio-friendly pop song destined for any R1 playlists, but it is strong on hooks – and would perhaps even qualify as punk-pop if it wasn’t so damn dense and dirty. And this is why it’s great, of course. Dense, dirty, angry is what I’m here for.

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Ghost Painted Sky – Kissing Lions

Posted: 6 October 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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6th October 2026

Leeds grungers Pulled Apart by Horses celebrated punching a lion in the throat on their breakthrough single: Massachusetts darkwavers Ghost Painted Sky eschew such violence, and on their latest ‘maxi-single’ release, are all about kissing them.

The inverted commas around the format are by no means intended as mockery or derision: I remember well when the maxi-single was a specific format, initially on 12” and, later, CD,and differentiated from the EP, which usually featured four or five tracks. The maxi usually consisted of an extended version of the A side / single, the single version, plus the B-side. It was the standard from around the mid-80s until the late 90s, particularly in mainland Europe. And that old-school maxi is precisely what we get here from Ghost Kissing Sky – only digitally, of course.

Ghost Painted Sky (to refer to them by the acronym of GPS feels wrong and misleading – somewhat ironically) formed to create dark, introspective music, built on the foundational influences of trad goth, post-punk, and darkwave in 2014, and according to their bio, ‘their approach has always been to treat the music as a vehicle for processing life’s struggles and ultimately for catharsis, release, reflection, and rebirth’. So how does this fit with being smoochy with big cats? It hardly sounds bleak or gothy, even allowing for the fact The Cure did ‘The Lovecats’ (which was neither bleak nor gothy, but a fun, frivolous pop tune).

Founder and multi-instrumentalist David Strong explains that “‘Kissing Lions’ describes those mostly vain attempts to seize on anything that creates a fleeting feeling of being alive for a moment amid relentless waves of the humdrum, doldrums, and failure, which so often end up being misguided and ultimately just creating a thicker mire even more strangling than the original situation one sought to escape… bad decisions that bite back and create further downward spirals.” Ah, yes, that’s more like it!

And when it comes to the sound, ‘Kissing Lions’ is a swirling, brooding work, defined by a swelling, chorus-heavy bass, picked, reverby guitar, and sweeping synths, in a fashion highly reminiscent of The Cure circa Disintegration. The addition of violin adds depth and a further layer of mournfulness. And lyrically, it has all the hallmarks of quintessential goth – existential anguish, frustration, self-punishment:

Turn it off, this channel’s boring, see?

This is not how my life was supposed to be

So I take this poison inside of me

If it’s not three minutes and thirty three seconds of synthy gothy darkwave perfection, it’s got to be pretty close.

The ‘Effervescent Remix’ is not an extended version – in fact it’s a second shorter than the original – but is, as the title suggests, presents the song with a rather more buoyant slant with a synthy bassline replacing the original, bringing something of a Mixed Up vibe to it.

If a similar synth bass sound is repeated on the third track, ‘My Words Are Not My Own’, it’s to quite different effect, pulsing steadily and insistently alongside a metronomic beat and beneath a fractal guitar tones, and it’s all to good effect, and this is a tidy, neatly packaged taste of Ghost Painted Sky – and a perfect example of what the maxi-single was – is – all about.

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Metamorph – Witchfire

Posted: 30 September 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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18th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Every day is Halloween in the world of Margot Day. So the fact that she’s dropped ‘Witchfire’ mid-September is simply her doing her thing. The New Yorker’s been doing shimmery gothy stuff since the 80s with The Plague, and as Metamorph, she’s been prolific in conjuring witchy-themed electropop for a whole decade now, and ‘Witchfire’ is all treat, no trick.

It’s a succinct sliver of a song, which balances equally elements of quintessential post-punk and contemporary pop stylings. How this translates is a song driven by an uptempo, propulsive synth bass and pumping drum machine paired with a song-song vocal melody treated, in places, with some heavy autotune. The autotune thing has become a massive trend in recent years – not in using it to tidy things up, but that wildly overprocessed ‘feature’ that we first heard on Cher’s ‘Life After Love’. Why is it all the rage now? I don’t know, and I can’t say I’m a fan, but its application here shows how Margot Day continues to move with the times, and that she’s unashamedly a pop artist as much as she is as a purveyor of sultry, seductive, supernatural gothiness. And it would be difficult to deny that ‘Witchfire’ is catchy.

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The dance mix which provides the b-side emphasises the bangin’ beats and adds a minute and a half, some of which is given to a flute solo, which works considerably better on the ears than it does on paper.

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PIG – Dirt Box

Posted: 6 September 2026 in Albums, Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Metropolis Records – 4th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Lately, PIG’s rate of output has been nothing short of phenomenal. Having released the album Hurt People Hurt in May, they’ve just embarked on a substantial, two-month long tour of North America and Canada, and to coincide with that, they’ve not only got a remix EP, but also Dirt Box, which features four new songs paired with a remix of each, making for another album-length release.

There is, to an extent, a sense that if you’ve been following recent PIG releases, you’ll have a reasonable idea of what to expect. Since resurrecting his porcine project in 2016, Raymond Watts has discovered that the swine yields pearls when plundering a seam which places a uniquely gritty spin on glam ground up with industrial and greased with S&M sleaze and a dash of religion for that extra spice. This isn’t to say that PIG albums have fallen to the formulaic, so much as the fact that they’ve found their groove, and the new material over the last ten years hasn’t so much flowed, as been in full spate. It’s working out petty nicely, too. Despite touring as the support for Nine Inch Nails on the seminal Downward Spiral tour and having albums released on Reznor’s label in the mid-90s, PIG remained eternal outsiders, perhaps being just that bit too weird and eclectic for the prevailing tastes at the time. So while NIN were hailed by the press as being groundbreaking, Watts’ work, which tossed in classical samples, strings and all sorts into the grinding industrial mix, taking cues from mentor and collaborator JG Thirlwell, AKA Foetus, the outsider’s outsider – was simply three steps too far. But now… it seems that having tempered the hybridity and experimentalism a shade, the world has finally come around to PIG, with the likes of Classic Rock and Vive Le Rock raving about Hurt People Hurt. I think it was Genesis P-Orridge who made a comment along the lines that if you stick around long enough, you’ll come to be accepted, and whoever it was, this certainly seems true of PIG, who’ve been going nearly forty years now, with the release of debut single ‘Never for Fun’ and album A Poke in the Eye… With a Sharp Stick being released in 1988.

Lead single and EP opener, ‘An American Ideal of Beauty’ starts out sounding like Watts may have jumped the shark – or the wall of Marshall stacks – and gone straight-up spandex hair metal on us, or perhaps even all-out Kiss, but then the quintessential guitar chug of Jim Davies cuts in and grinds hard and we get to breathe a sigh of relief. And here we go: religious-sounding ululations ring out against a bubbling synth bass. ‘Put up, shut up! Do your duty!’ Watts snarls against a backdrop of chugging rhythm guitars and layer upon layer of detail – and the truth is, this is as boldly extravagant in its sonic span as the most revered work among fans, namely the material which featured on Red, Raw and Sore, Sinsation, and Wrecked, which saw Watts colliding insane ambition with some inspired songwriting. Yep, he’s still got it, and any recognition, however belated, is well-deserved. But does this mean that PIG are mainstream now, and beyond the remit of Aural Aggravation? I don’t think so. They’re not about to be played on the Radio 1 breakfast show, I’ve been a fan since the early 90s, and Raymond Watts will forever be one of my favourite interview subjects when we met in York a few years ago.

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After the rabid industrial glam grind of ‘Your Reptilian Overlord Presents’, ‘Infidel’ slows the pace and finds Watts go Bowie circa Outside with a heavy dose of darkwave in the mix. With a strong hook and a poppy undercurrent, it showcases the range and quality of the songwriting that sets PIG apart from many of their peers – not that they really have any at this point. They’ve diverged a long way from the acts that emerged around the same time on Wax Trax! evolving along a very different trajectory from, say, KMFDM (of whom Watts was a member) or Ministry. ‘Butterfly’ is a churning, mutant beast of a tune, and has the makings of a future classic given time to embed.

The remixes… well, they’re remixes. In their favour, they’re very different from the original versions. The Cyanotic remix of ‘Your Reptilian Overlord Presents’ is up first, and it’s a noisy, fucked-up industrial blast reminiscent of JG Thirlwell’s remixes of NIN. Admittedly, it’s nowhere near a extreme as his contributions on Fixed, but they set new precedents when it came to remixes, and the world has never been the same since. The beat calls to mind early 00s Pitch Shifter, and it makes for an intense four and a half minutes. The surprisingly mellow Combichrist remix of ‘Butterfly’ is the other standout: in stripping the song back and going for a more darkwave backing to Watt’s gnarly vocal, it makes for a radical transformation.

What’s remarkable is that in producing an album a year – give or take – plus EPs of offcuts and remixes in between – the standard of PIG releases hasn’t only been consistent, but continues to reach new heights. Instead of running out of ideas, PIG are surging with creativity and riding the crest of a wave.

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Los Tres Mortales – Bourbon

Posted: 6 September 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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4th September 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

So here we are in 2026, and while I’ve been suggesting that there’s a goth revival simmering up for a fair while now – I mean years rather than months – if finally seems to be upon us. TV:AM, Sick Man of Europe, and Mouth Ulcers in particular have been leading a(nother) new wave of bands whose sound is steeped in the old-school sound.

Perhaps Lol Tolhurst’s assessment in his recent book – plainly entitled Goth – is right. He devotes much verbiage to aligning the emergence of the first goth bands with Thatcher’s Britain in the late 70s and early 80s. This is by no means a groundbreaking, or even a new, framing of the birth of this disparate scene, and he really does labour this point throughout the book. Fair enough: he was there, living through it, and it was this, and a sense of being an outsider, which compelled him and Robert Smith to form The Cure. He also details how Manchester was the very definition of dereliction and deprivation, and that Joy Division ‘s bleak sound is the aural encapsulation of this. Also fair enough, but his entry for The Sisters of Mercy is barely a page long, reducing them to almost a footnote in the history of goth, while making no mention whatsoever of the other Leeds bands who emerged around this time. It’s his book, and his perspective, but to completely bypass the very epicentre of the emerging goth scene of the early 80s isn’t merely an oversight, it’s a misrepresentation.

This preface is necessary when approaching ‘Bourbon’, the debut single from Los Tres Mortales. While based between New Jersey, Ohio, and California, bringing together Caroline Blind and CWHK of Sunshine Blind with Troy Payne of The Wake. As the band bio recounts, ‘Following Sunshine Blind’s original run, Caroline continued making music with members of The Wake, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Faith and the Muse, The Sisters of Mercy, Sweet Ermengarde, Children on Stun and Switchblade Symphony’. As such, there’s a direct link between Los Tres Mortales and the original Leeds scene, which is as significant as that to the US scene and acts connected with the Cleopatra label (which was responsible for the release of the first comprehensive March Violets compilation, The Botanic Verses in the US in 1993).

Where I’m going here is in two directions at once: the first is that 2026 bears some strong parallels to those dark days of the late 70s and early 80s. Back then, the north of England copped it harder than London and its wider sprawl, and the same is true now, but the bottom line is that both here and in the US – supposedly wealthy nations – social divisions, particularly between class, and wealth have reached a new extreme. As a measure, CEOs earned the entire year’s salary of their average employee faster in 2026 than in any year previous – the 6th January, to be precise. Throw in climate change, world war, and the fact AI (not immigrants) is killing job opportunities and could well lead to the hastened demise of the species, and there’s reason to be pessimistic. Goth was always dark music for dark times, but unlike other genres – metal being perhaps an obvious example – goth balances nihilism with doomed romanticism and a certain poeticism.

And this is precisely what Los Tres Mortales give us with ‘Bourbon’. It’s dark, and revels in images of self-destructive rock ‘n’ roll excess. Because if the world’s going to end, why not see it out while spiralling into personal oblivion, soaked in booze and surrounded by chaos?

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Spindly guitars are nailed down by a thunking gritty bass, which is in turn melded to hefty rolling drums that are the absolute quintessence of that early 80s goth sound. Caroline’s dramatic vocals bring that Siouxsie / Skeletal family feel, while Troy’s brooding baritone whispers and growls a later below, replicating that taut dynamic that defined both The March Violets and Floodland-era Sisters. ‘Bourbon’ adds a dash of spice with the kind of filthy swagger reminiscent of The Batfish Boys (‘Swamp Liquor’ in particular). It’s a cracking debut, and one which brings together the different qualities of all of the contributors to deliver something which hits the bullseye on the first shot.

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Not My Wife – Best Friend

Posted: 27 August 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Blaggers Records – 13th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibnor

When I was in my teens and early twenties, I got quite hung up on an existential anguish that no two people perceived things in exactly the same way. It wasn’t completely unfounded: there’s empirical evidence that shows that there is no such thing as a reliable witness. Particularly in moments of heightened stress or panic, the brain will scramble to process what it sees, while at the same time juggling the options of fight or flight. As such, it will assemble a narrative from fragmentary snippets, and attempt to fill in the gaps. But even more fundamentally, no two people will perceive something as fundamental colour in the same way. I have a mug which I consider to be grey; the rest of my family tell me it’s blue. And while I concede it’s perhaps a gunmetal shade, I still consider it to be grey. And so it is that two parties engaged in conversation will simultaneously experience completely different conversations.

This is the premise of the third single from London-based, New Zealand-formed five-piece Not My Wife, which explores ‘the duality of relationships, and how two people can be living within the same reality, while experiencing it quite differently. The verses detail one person sitting in the bliss of new love, while the choruses expose the narrator’s realisation that their partner may not have been feeling the same way. The song explores the theme of memory, interpretation and how we can put another person at the centre of our world without wanting to see them clearly’.

Driven by a crunchy bassline, ‘Best Friend’ nags away nicely, managing to be both breezy and somehow claustrophobic, and to meld postpunk with a wistful indie sensibility. The guitar is stop / start, choppy, and there’s a subtly melancholic hue in Olivia Mercer’s vocals. There’s something about this single that’s quite touching, in ways that aren’t readily articulable, much in the same way a vague memory will linger on the edge of your recollection, and while you experience it as a sensation, somewhere in the gut, you simply can’t place it, chronologically, locationally, or any other way. It offers a sense of dappled shade and wistfulness, and also of a certain self-disconnect, wrapped in a hazy melody which reflects the fact that in ten years, this will all seem as a dream, or another life.

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Pleb – Grease Trap

Posted: 4 August 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Human Worth – 7th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Having thoroughly enjoyed the churning racket of Leeds grindcore / sludge / infernal racket duo Pleb when they opened for Unsane at The Brudenell in April, the announcement of their debut EP being released on the esteemed Human Worth label came as excellent news. And even better news is that they absolutely deliver on the promise of the live show here.

The credits very much summarise the two players’ contributions, with D. Fraser providing ‘Guitar / Feedback Hell’, and S. Myles doing ‘Drums / Squawks / Grunts’.

This is one serious fucking racket, and it would be a massive letdown if it was anything else, with eight songs and a total run time of just over ten minutes. There’s no pissing about here, just squalls of feedback and rasping, rabid vocals barking away low in the mix amidst the churning dingy noise. But then, this was always going to be the case. Check their pedigree: between them, their CVs list Cattle, Grub Nap, Groak – luminaries of the Leeds DIY noise scene that’s been thriving in tiny pub venues and basements and rehearsal rooms and the like for an age. It’s a tight-knit, but incredibly welcoming scene that’s spawned countless bands all committed to making the most ferocious, ugly noise imaginable. And with Grease Trap, you don’t have to imagine it.

And despite being just the two of them, it sounds like a full band, the guitar signal split to provide grinding low end and raging feedback at the top simultaneously. The result is a devastating sonic blast that assaults the senses with all frequencies. But why Grease Trap? The band explain:

“A grease trap is a tank that folks stick under the sink in a place that deals with food, it’s supposed to stop clumps of food and fat from going down the drain. There was one down our gaff and we had to empty it when we first moved in and I’ve never smelt owt like it. Me and our lasses dad were boaking the whole time while carrying buckets of foul stinking water up and down the corridor to try and wash the bloody thing out. Feels like that’s where we’re at as a society at the moment, we had all this stuff in place to try and stop things from going wrong but everything is rotting from the inside out and it’s poisoning the water supply. Greed is absolute, hatred is being weaponised and apathy is apparently cool again somehow. These songs are about the world wide descent into Fascism, the dutty roz, that orange bastard, our entire generation not breeding cos we’re in a hostile environment, technology turning us inside out, our inability to face our own problems without decking it and a bunch of other fun stuff. It doesn’t offer any solutions but sometimes you need to scream into the abyss eh?”

Lacking a grease trap myself, and my house having been built circa 1890 and still connected to the original ceramic Victorian plumbing which connects to the (also Victorian) drain system, I’ve had to invest in a set of drain rods, which are subject to regular usage to unclog backups that threaten to plug my back yard. they seem to be caused predominantly by mini fatbergs congealed around masses of hair (which evidently aren’t mine). And I can confirm that the job is nothing short of rank, dragging out clods of stinking clumps of sludge. it still doesn’t stink as badly as Reform, though, or, judging by footage online, as much as Trump when he nods off and soils himself. Rotten politics, rotten behaviour, rotten intestines, it would seem.

This is all of the above compacted into the most intense sonic explosion. It distils the rage at the fetid state of Western culture and the sewer state of our politics, our media, social media and blasts with complete abandon, and titles like ‘CLODS OF SHIT AND BONE’, ‘THE BRUISES MEAN IT’S ON THE WAY OUT’ and ‘THE EYES MELT FIRST’ sound exactly as you’d expect. With Grease Trap, Pleb vent the rage in the rawest, most direct fashion. And it absolutely hits the spot.

PS fuck fascism.

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Blacklist Union – Madame Butterfly

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

Just the other day, I was contemplating – and discussing with my daughter – how practically every style and fashion had been recycled in the not so distant past, or was in otherwise back in vogue, with the exception of hair rock and spandex. But then I came to the new EP by Italian ‘alternative’ rock / industrial act Noir Addiction, and while it was predominantly a conglomeration of industrial and grunge, there were some strong hints of music from the time that settle forgot. I’d assumed it was a singular exception, but then I caught Greek act Dismiss just last week and noted how their hybrid of punk and hard rock invited comparisons to both Amyl and the Sniffers and Lita Ford, and now there’s the video which accompanies Blacklist Union’s latest single, ‘Madame Butterfly’, and the growing evidence is starting to suggest otherwise. Sonically, it’s very much steeped in 90s grunge, at least in the verses… but the choruses, and visually… we’ll return to this after we’ve unpacked the rest of it.

The accompanying notes provide few surprises by way of context, explaining how the takes its title ‘from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly’ but ‘is a world away from the opera’s tragic tale of unrequited love. Instead, it serves as a heartfelt love letter from frontman Tony West to Lorraine Lewis of Femme Fatale’.

Femme Fatale still stand as one of the definitive glam metal / hard rock bands of the period 1987-1990, and Lorraine Lewis was a classic rock pinup, who would also front Vixen between 2013 and 2025.

‘Madame Butterfly’ is the lead single from Blacklist Union’s forthcoming album, The Good, The Bad And The Notorious, due for release in spring 2027. The release follows the acclaimed single ‘Jackson’, Blacklist Union’s reimagining of the Johnny Cash and June Carter classic, which paired Tony West with – yes – Lorraine Lewis for a duet ‘blending outlaw country, punk attitude and rock ‘n’ roll swagger.’ Tony West must have been creaming his skinny jeans.

‘Madame Butterfly’ is unreconstituted, back-to-the-source, glammy hard rock, the likes of which we haven’t really seen in a long time. The fact that it does incorporate grunge elements indicates just how things have changed in the last thirty years, given that grunge was a rebellion against precisely this. But… different times. Pandemic. World war. Shit on shit. Somehow, lately, it feels easier to forgive.

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Kath & the Kicks – Sleep

Posted: 30 July 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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3rd July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

For so, so long, the UK music industry was so London-centric that it actually hurt. The music press would flock to all the regular London haunts within spitting distance of their offices and declare that they’d just witnessed the next big thing. often, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, because said bands found themselves in the national press, but because London is so huge, they rarely needed to venture beyond the M25. There were moments in time when cities in the North spawned scenes which were simply impossible to ignore – Manchester in the late 70s and again in he 90s, Sheffield in the 80s, and Leeds, also in the 80s – as much as the press tried to look the other way there. But over the last fifteen years or so, Leeds has consistently birthed acts of a remarkable quality.

It’s true that, living in York, I may be prone to a certain Leeds bias of the kind which tinged the London-based press historically, but I still have to travel to the next county to see shows in Leeds, which requires both time, effort, and expenditure. In short, the quality has to be there to motivate me to go. But more to the point, this is not a matter of settling for what’s accessible. In the late 80s and early 90s, I yearned to live in London because it seemed that’s where I needed to be to discover the most happening music. This is not the case anymore: the Leeds scene is positively foaming with exciting acts, more than I can even keep pace with.

During this time of new band emerging on a weekly basis, Kath and the Kicks have been beavering away, building a following through a steady live schedule and a flow of exhilarating releases, the latest of which is ‘Sleep’.

Pitched as being for fans of Skunk Anansie, Siouxsie Sioux, Muse, Guano Apes, No Doubt, and The Runaways, ‘Sleep’ brings together slugging grunge riffery and doomy / goth vocals with a subtle pop edge – that is to say, amidst the ethereality and posed drama, there’s a melodic accessibility. Here, they bring the kind of guitar-driven heft, blended with soaring melody, that invites comparisons to heavier contemporary acts like Cwfen (and given that Sorrows was one of my top albums of 2025, that’s no small compliment).

Their name may carry connotations of a middling, middle-aged pub-rock band, but Kath & The Kicks bring full-throttle power, and properly kick arse with gutsy guitars and a distinctive dynamism, and with ‘Sleep’ they bring it all together into a densely-packed guitar-driven blast. Top drawer.

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Noir Addiction – Pretty Things Don’t Last

Posted: 16 July 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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SoulPunx Records – 16th July 2026

Christopher Nosnnibor

Italian industrial rock / alternative act Noir Addiction have wasted no time since the release of their debut album in September, swiftly knocking out three singles in quick succession. Now, they’re gathering these singles together, along with a further three unreleased songs to bring us Pretty Things Don’t Last, which they say is ‘an EP about impermanence, distortion, and the beauty found in what’s unstable, broken, and intense. It moves through chaos, desire, power, disillusionment, and rebellion, tracing a journey where control is questioned and identity is constantly reshaped’.

Opening with ‘Serve Me Some Crime’, the first of the singles, which was released back in March, we arrive in familiar territory (if we’ve been keeping up, that is), and it makes for an instant grab, with its uptempo beat, melded with an insistent bass throb and dirty, driving guitar sound, that crunches away, hard, and the whole thing has got ‘anthem’ and ‘high impact’ stamped all over it.

Starting this strong means they’ve set themselves a real challenge to maintain the standard and the solidity over the course of the remaining five songs. It’s like when you see an amazing band at the start of the evening: the first thought, after ‘woah’, ventures towards ‘I wouldn’t want to follow them’, to the acceptance that the night has likely peaked early.

Not so Noir Addiction. They bring the fire for the EP’s entire duration. The sound and formula is fundamentally set, but how they work within the template is with confidence and consistency, keeping on with back-to-back hard grooves.

Of the previously unreleased songs, ‘Toxic Twins’ is something of a standout, quite boldly leaning into a more overtly hard rock sound, complete with muscular lead guitar work which thrusts its way to the fore over a grinding bass before they go all out on the kind of chorus that would be at home in an arena setting, and has the big-balls swagger of a band like Shotgun Messiah or Zodiac Mindwarp – absorbing all the cliché and throwing it back with a knowingness but also a straight face.

Similarly, ‘Cold Habit’ stomps hard and brings the almost inevitable nods to Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails, while being more ‘rock’ in its delivery, and a chorus that’s brimming with hooks and accessibility. Recent single ‘Money for the Honey’ packs the sleaze in tight and hard, and while there are hints of spandex in the execution, there’s no debate to be had here: this is a solid rock banger.

‘Radio Funeral’ brings a dash of country and grunge to a mid-pace closer to an EP that’s bursting with confidence – and tunes.

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Photo: Valerio Fanelli

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