Posts Tagged ‘Riffs’

Eville – Plaything

Posted: 14 February 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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14th February 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Eville, who have been gaining momentum – and radio play – for a while, soared to a new peak with ‘Ballistic’ late last year. While sonically encapsulating the title, it also distilled the very essence of the band into THE most explosive two-and-a-bit minutes of no-messing nu-metal.

If ‘Plaything’ suggests something more cuddly, think again. Once again, they tap that classic nu-metal structure of a quiet but tetchy intro, jittery electronics by way of an intro – Something that can be traced back to Pitch Shifter’s first couple of albums back in the early 90s. ‘Gritter’ from Submit is exemplary, and of course not only would Pitch Shifter transition to an overtly nu-metal sound at the turn of the millennium, incorporating elements of drum ‘n’ bass in their sound in the late 90s, but guitarist Jim Davis played with both Pitchshifter (as they became) and The Prodigy. This detour is simply to illustrate the crossover between genres, and to contextualise the sound Eville have absolutely mailed – because after this tense, tetchy intro, the monumental riff hits, and hits hard, and immediately hits an irresistible groove.

A mere ten seconds in, and it’s clear that this is going to be a killer – and it is.

‘I might look cute but Imma get gnarly / I can get nasty, nothing gets past me,’ Eva Sheldreake warns, picking up the lyrical thread of ‘Ballistic’ and presenting a strong feminist stance. The message is direct and clear, and the band’s photos back it up: whether the outfit is a pink bikini or decorating garb, never judge a woman by her outfit, and never assume she’s lacking capability, whether it’s to do DIY or play guitar and rock out, hard.

‘Plaything’ certainly rocks out, and hard. The sheer density of the sound kicks the air out of your lungs, while the chorus hook is as strong as they come. The mid-section goes full Slipknot, the barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat referenced in the lyrics translating to the brutal delivery.

Where Eville stand out – apart from on every level – is in the way they bring ultra-pro, radio-quality production and accessible melody to massively hefty, bludgeoning metal. If there was ever any doubt that they should be playing festivals rather than pubs, ‘Plaything’ obliterates it. No two ways about it: these guys are ready to conquer the world.

Watch: ‘What?’ by JUKU

Posted: 27 January 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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We’ve been bigging up York’s mighty riffmongers JUKU since their debut gig in the summer of 2023, because they’re simply fucking awesome, a real force to be reckoned with. Punky, new-wavey, but noisy, full-on, a sonic powerhouse.

Now, you don’t just have to take our word for it if you can’t see them live, as they’ve unveiled a video for ‘What?’ It encapsulates the band, and their sound, perfectly.

They write, ‘As a band, we sit in the place where creativity meets raw chaos. In our world, noise is harnessed as a form of expression. We channel frustration into sound. We take our discontent and transform it into energy. We outright challenge the notion of what it means to be seen and heard in the music industry, which often silences dissent… This track is a prime example of the things that motivate us to do what we do. Question everything and everyone, and do not allow your voice to be pushed into the obscurity of the background.’

Check it here:

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Weed Demon – The Doom Scroll

Posted: 22 January 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Electric Valley Records – 31st January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

The four-piece ‘sludge ‘n’ roll stoner metal band’ from Columbus, OH, come with the description of being ‘the audio equivalent of bong water spilled on a Ouija board’

The Doom Scroll – such an obvious but well-placed piece of punning – is their third album, and lands a full decade after their debut EP – or as they put it, they ‘exhaled a cloud of riffs over the doom metal scene with their debut EP, Stoned to Death… [and] since then, they’ve consistently delivered a steady dose of sludgy, groove-laden stoner doom potent enough to make Beelzebub himself bang his horns.’

For this outing, they promise ‘a reinvention of their signature sludge ‘n’ roll style of doom. Equal parts unrelenting and crushing, yet infused with heavy blues-inspired riffage, this new chapter sees Weed Demon expanding their sonic horizons like never before… Expect doom, gloom, sludge, thrash, death, blues, and even a dash of dungeon synth for good measure.’

That this is an album which contains just five tracks (six if you get the vinyl, which features a cover of Frank Zappa’s ‘Willy the Pimp’) is a fair indication of its form and the duration of said tracks: apart from a couple of interlude-pieces, they’re all six-plus minute sprawlers, with the colossal ‘Coma Dose’ spreading out over more than nine and a half minutes.

And so it is that after the slightly pretentious and proggy-sounding synth-led instrumental intro that is the woozy, wibbly, ‘Acid Dungeon’, they’re thundering in with the rifftastic ‘Tower of Smoke’. It’s a quintessential stoner-doom effort, a mid-paced slab of thick, distorted riffage with a strong Sabbath via Melvins vibe to it. It’s big on excess – of course it is. It simply wouldn’t work without the widdly flourishes that spin their way up from the dense, grainy overdrive that just keeps on ploughing away. And it keeps going on – and on. As it should, of course. It simply wouldn’t be befitting to batter a leaden riff for three or four minutes – you can’t mong out to that.

‘Coma Dose’ starts out gently with some desert rock twangs and a shuffling beat that’s almost a dance on the beach kind of groove, and there are – finally – some drawling vocals low in the mix. A couple of minutes in, of course, the riff lands, and the vocals switch from spacey prog to growly metal, and just like that, things get dark and they get heavy. But for all the weight, there’s still a floaty trippiness about it, a softer, mellowed-out edge: it’s heavy, but it’s not harsh, or by any means aggressive. There are some flamboyant drum fills and a super-gritty bass break over the song’s protracted duration, and at times, it sounds as if the batteries are starting to run low as it slows to a thick, treacly crawl and Jordan Holland’s vocals sound as if he’s being garrotted – and again, this is all on point.

There are elements of hardcore to the shouted vocals and pummelling power of ‘Roasting the Sacred Bones’, while ‘Dead Planet Blues’ brings a quite delicate blues-rock twist and even a hint of Alice in Chains circa Jar of Flies.

Rather than push hard at the parameters of the genre, Weed Demon nudge at the edges in all directions, and this works in their favour. There’s plenty here to keep diehard fans of all things sludgy, stonery, and doomy content without straying into territories that don’t sit well, but then there’s enough to make it different and interesting.

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Watch My Dying – Egyenes Kerőlő

Posted: 21 January 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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24th January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

These are dark days. I feel as if I’ve written words to this effect a lot in recent months and years. It would perhaps be rather too much to expect there to be the sunrise of a new, optimistic dawn breaking over the horizon, but when there is nothing but the glow of flames beneath a pall of smoke on so many very real horizons, any sun on the metaphorical horizon is eclipsed by a billowing pother and clouds of ash. And then, last night, I felt my heart sink yet deeper still as Donald Trump signed away the protection of the Arctic in his quest for ‘liquid gold’, and declared a ‘state of emergency’ over the Mexican border and promised mass-deportations – ‘millions and millions’, being his megalomaniacal mantra, while the man who owns him, the richest man on the planet, who seeks not only world domination, but galactic domination, threw Nazi salutes to a huge crowd of fanatics.

Fighting the urge to assume a foetal position on the hearth rug in front of the fire and stay there for the next four years in the hope there may still be a world after that, I poured a strong winter ale and took some time to sift through my submissions for something that might make suitable listening.

Listening to light music in the face of such darkness and despondency feels inappropriate, somehow, so stumbling upon the latest album by Watch My Dying felt fortuitous. Extreme metal has a way of providing a means of escape, sometimes.

According to their bio, ‘Watch My Dying has been a cornerstone of the Hungarian metal scene for 25 years, a hidden gem for international fans of extreme metal. Formed in 1999 in Hungary, the band quickly became a defining force in extreme tech/groove metal throughout the early 2000s… Known for their philosophical and socio-critical Hungarian lyrics, WMD stands out in the extreme metal genre, with excerpts of their work inspiring novels and poetry in Hungary.’

It’s the title track which opens the album, with a slow, atmospheric build, before heavy, trudging guitars enter the fray, and it’s only in final throes that all fury breaks loose.

While there’s no shortage of archetypally death- and black-metal riffs, WMD forge a claustrophobic atmosphere with chunky, chugging segments, enriched by layers of cold, misty synths, and some thick, nu-metal slabs of overdrive, too: ‘Kopogtatni egy tükrön’ is exemplary. ‘Jobb nap úgysem lehet’ provides an interlude of heavy drone and hypnotic tribal drumming before one of the album’s most accessible tracks, ‘Napköszörű’ crashes in. It’s hardly a party banger, but brings together industrial and metal with a certain theatricality, finished with some impressively technical details – but none of it’s overdone. ‘Minden rendben’ is more aggrotech than anything specifically metal, and it’s a banger.

Egyenes Kerőlő isn’t nearly as dark as a whole as the first few songs suggest, but it’s still plenty heavy and leads the listener on something of a sonic journey. They cram a lot into the eleven tracks, especially when considering that the majority are under four minutes, with three clocking in around the minute mark. It’s certainly varied, and while not all the songs have quite the same appeal – the last track, ‘Utolsó Fejezet’, borders on Eurovision folk – the fact that they’re in no way predictable is a strong plus.

So many technical players are so busy showcasing their skills that they forget the value of songs. This is not the case with Watch My Dying: the groove element is strong, and there are melodies in the mix – just not in the vocals. The end result is more accessible and uplifting than I would ever have imagined. I almost forgot that the world is ending for a good twenty minutes.

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Toru – Velours Dévorant

Posted: 13 January 2025 in Albums, Reviews
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Cruel Nature Records – 14th January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

Released on various formats by various labels in different countries, the latest offering from genre-blasting French instrumental trio Toru is being released on cassette (and download) by Northumberland’s Cruel Nature in an edition of 65. Following on from 2020’s eponymous debut and a split release with Teufelskeller, which saw Toru join forces with CR3C3LL3, this time around, they’re different again, and having been featured as album of the day at Bandcamp Central just the other day, the signs are that Velours Dévorant could see them significantly expand their fanbase – and deservedly so.

Velours Dévorant featires five V-themed tracks defined by some riotous riffmongering and big, dirty, overdriven guitar noise with tempo shifts galore. Blasting in with ‘VHS’, it’s a manic ride through waves of tempestuous, bludgeoning racket from the very start. Trilling feedback fulfils the duty of a lead guitar line, while a shuddering, ribcage-rattling bass tears its way out from the chaos atop some heavy, but highly skilled jazz-inspired drumming.

Some will likely describe their sonic blitzkrieg as ‘experimental’, but that’s something of a misrepresentation, in that it suggests a lack of coherence, a haphazard and unplanned approach. The sudden stops and starts, the moments where a chord hangs, suspended in the air for just the briefest moment before the fractionally-delayed snare smash or cymbal crash, where the three of them simultaneously draw breath in just a split second… those microcosmic moments require remarkable precision – unquestionably, intuition is key, but rehearsal too. The skill is to make it sound haphazard, unpredictable, to keep the listener on the edge of their seat, buttocks clenched, while having it all worked out. Every composition contains moments which feel like the sonic equivalent of watching trapeze artists, where you tense and momentarily stop breathing as they fly through the air, seemingly in slow-motion, tense in case they fail to grab on: will they keep it together, or will everything collapse into a mess of sludge like a sewer rupturing and spewing a fountain of slurry?

These are long tracks – the shortest is over five and a half minutes – with infinite twists and turns. The skewed, surging jazz-grunge of ‘Voiles’ – a whopping eleven and a half minutes in duration – is representative, and encapsulates the essence of the album. The guitars squall and screed in a showcase of noise-rock par excellence, while the bass lurches and snarls, grooves and grinds, and the percussion is simply wild. It’s like listening an instrumental version of every track by the Jesus Lizard all at once. There’s a low-impact, atmospheric mid-section that rolls and rumbles, yawns and splashes… lazily would e the wrong word, but it takes its time, with bent guitar chords twanging like elastic bands, while the sparse percussion meanders seemingly without aim. But then it all reshapes and takes form once more, building, building, and then exploding so hard as to detonate so hard as to blow your eyeballs out of their sockets. Fuck, when these guys hit the pedals, they really do go all out.

I’ve heard a plethora of zany noise-rock acts, and have loved many – most of whom are so obscure that to reference them or draw comparisons would be the most pointless exercise imaginable: ‘hey, wow, this band I’ve not heard of sound like a bunch of other bands I’ve never heard of, that’s informative!’.

On Velours Dévorant, Toru take the tropes of post-rock, with its protracted delicate segments and slow-building atmosphere, and incorporate them within a noise-rock setting, with the result being epic tunes with some incredibly graceful, and ultimately poignant expanses, pressed tight against some of the most explosive overloading, overdriven abrasion going. And then, of course, there are the jazz elements: ‘Volutes’ is the apex of jazz/grunge hybridization, and it works so well. Not sold on Nirvana meets The Necks? Trust me.

The fourteen-minute title track is… special. It is, in many respects, the evolution of post-rock circa 2004. Chiming guitars, infinite space, haunting atmosphere. The intro is magnificent, beautiful. Her Name is Calla’s sprawling ‘Condor and River’ comes to mind. That use of space, that simmering tension, that sense of something growing which is more than… well, it’ s simply more. There are things hidden. When the riffing lets rip, holy shit, does the riffing let rip, fully shredding blasts of distortion tear through with obliterating force. The track feels like an album in its own right.

It seems like a while since I’ve felt compelled to describe an album as ‘epic’ – but this… this is next-level epic.

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Watch: ‘Ulysses’ Lies’ by March Of Scylla

Posted: 23 December 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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French progressive metal collective March of Scylla has released a captivating music video for their latest track, ‘Ulysses’ Lies’, from the forthcoming album Andromeda, set to be released on March 7, 2025, via Klonosphere/Season of Mist. Directed by Kevin Meriaux, the video seamlessly merges the band’s dark, progressive metal sound with their signature mythological storytelling, offering a mesmerizing visual experience.

Watch the video here:

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Initiated by Christofer Fraisier, guitarist and former member of Taman Shud, March Of Scylla is a dark, progressive metal project that emerged in Amiens in 2020. The band features drummer Gilles Masson from Ashura, bassist Robert Desbiendras, and vocalist Florian Vasseur. Their two EPs, Archives and Dark Myth, showcase their diverse influences, drawing comparisons to Gojira, Tesseract, Sleep Token, and Architects.

Their debut album Andromeda was recorded, mixed, and mastered at Studio Sainte-Marthe in Paris by Francis Caste, and explores the vastness of space and humanity’s complex relationship with science, the cosmos, and the afterlife. The album tackles fundamental human anxieties, injustices, and emotional struggles, blending personal lyrics with universal mythology and history.

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Moose Knuckle / Perennial / JUKU – The Fulford Arms, York, 11th December 2024

Posted: 12 December 2024 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

My review of JUKU’s debut, at a Sunday matinee show last summer, continues to receive significant hits, and while they have played only a limited number of shows in the interim, it seems their reputation has been growing without their needing to take to the stage. It does mean that, personally, I’m keen to see them whenever the rare opportunity arises, and April seems like a long time ago.

They don’t disappoint: this is one tight, loud, band, and they pack the songs in back to back, no chat, no pissing about tuning up, no stalling to mop brows or regain breath. There isn’t a weak song in their half-hour set, but there are some standouts: ‘Pressure’ has the gritty drive of Motorhead and ‘No Fun’ is, actually, much fun. The set packs riffs and hooks like The Ramones on steroids… the lead guitarist is understated, focused, while on the other side of the stage, Dan is going ballistic, stomping and thrashing every ounce from his guitar like a man possessed. Sonically, they create contrast, too, with crisp, twangy tones cut through the huge, distorted roar blasting from Dan’s amp. They’re practically faultless, and the set ends in a ragged howl of feedback.

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JUKU

When the opening act is this strong, it’s a guaranteed good night either way: the rest of the acts are going to have to be bloody good to top them, in which case you’ve got a run of belters, or if they don’t match up, you can go home early knowing you’ve seen the best band of the night by getting down early. Tonight proves to be a bit of both.

New England trio Perennial – comprising guitar, synth, and drums, with dual vocals, are here on their first UK tour in support their third album, Art History, released over here by York-based label Safe Suburban Home Records. Sporting matching striped tops, they look vaguely nerdy, and unless you’ve heard or seen them before, nothing can quite prepare you for their wild stage act. Chelsea (keyboards, vocals) windmills and bounces all over, hyper as hell, and Chad Jewett, who’s a big fella, is a blur of movement, jumping and lurching and hurling himself and his guitar around, almost toppling his cabs just a couple of songs in. They positively crackle with energy, and are clearly absolutely loving every second of what is a remarkably well-conceived and structured set. They play US punk rock – or ‘modernist punk’ as they call it – with wit, and a keen sense of humour, delivering entertainment amped to the max. They clearly had a fair few fans in, and there was some exuberant dancing down the front. Definitely one of those bands that, if you get the chance, you should see.

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Perennial

Moose Knuckle showcase a solid sound, and some swagger, but the bar has been set incredibly high. They don’t have nearly as much energy as either of the two previous acts (although more every than Perennial would probably cause a power cut across the entire city), and they’re simply not quite loud enough or otherwise sonically powerful to get away with such a static performance. On another night, or had the bill been reversed, they’d have been decent enough, but they’re very much a meat and two veg rendition of punk, with most of the songs’ lyrics involving the repetition of a single line about forty times. And they’re not exactly inspired lines, either: ‘I need my dope, dope, dope, dope, dope,’ and ‘Dead! Beat! Daddy!’ is about the level of lyrical quality, the level of the lyrical quality, the level of the lyrical quality, the level of the lyrical quality.

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Moose Knuckle

Starting the set by calling everyone forward, only for them to all have to step back again to make way for the videographer prowling back and forth the full width of the stage a t least twice every song kinda backfired a bit, too.

Ultimately, there was nothing really ban about their set, it just lacked inspiration and energy in contrast to the previous acts.

The format of the night worked well, though: three bands, half an hour each, fifteen-minute interludes, 10:20 finish. Bish, bash, bosh. Perfect for midweek, and y’know, two outta three ain’t bad.

Fireblood – Goatslayer

Posted: 1 December 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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ROT ROOM – 6th December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Super-spiky, not-really-legible font? Check. White on black cover art? Check. Goats galore? Check: in the title and on the cover. This is going to be some gnarly metal din, right? Right. Sometimes, you can judge a book – or a record – by its cover.

Goatslayer is the second EP of 2024 for North Carolina ‘southern-fried sludge quartet’ Fireblood, following the Hellalujah EP, released in April.

They promise a work which ‘take[s] the genre in a somehow meaner, more extreme direction, they employ massive atonal guitars, booming drums, and churning low end to create a caustic, thick-as-molasses sound that has a physical weight to its thunderous mid-tempo grooves. Lumbering ever forward, each stomping beat comes laden with the threat of eruption, and when the top does blow it’s an explosion of seething rage.’

While I wasn’t aware that theirs was a specific genre, I’m on board with this, not least of all because the EPs four tracks are magnificently mangled, feedback-strewn heavy as hell riff-fests with an obsession with death.

‘A Perfect Place for Death’ is a lumbering chuggernaut, with overdriven power chords galore and processed, fucked-up vocals which add a deranged psychedelic edge to the purgatorial experience. As much as there are hints of Melvins in the blend, the vocal treatment reminds me of Henry Blacker, knowingly over the top and uncommonly high in the mix, but everything congeals into a thick black tarry sonic soup. ‘Death Comes Rolling’ thunders in hard, beating its chest and stamping its feet against an industrial-strength riff and roaring, glass ‘n’ gasolene gargling vocals. It ain’t pretty: it’s not supposed to be. It’s not subtle, either, but again, it’s not supposed to be.

They slow the pace to a crawl on the trudging ‘Burning Underground’, and it very much feel like being dragged by the collar down an endless staircase hewn in rock, the temperature rising as sulphurous lava and eternal flames draw ever closer, before ‘A.I.G.O.D.’ locks into a relentless and powerful groove, and pummels away at a dingy riff for seven and a half punishing minutes. Around halfway through, something twists and suddenly it seems to get even denser, sludgier, heavier, the guitar overload threatening to do damage to your speakers. The long, slow fade comes almost as a relief in easing the cranial pressure. This is a beast, and no mistake.

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The Giraffes – Cigarette

Posted: 8 November 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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27th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

They’re pitched as being for fans of, among others, the Jesus Lizard, QOTSA, Earthless, King Gizzard and Lizard Wizard, Fu Manchu, Daughters, and Beak, and their influences are listed as Dick Dale, Black Sabbath, Queens of the Stone Age, David Bowie, Ennio Morricone, Scott Walker, Pink Floyd, Fear, Erkin Koray, and Minute Men. And for those familiar with the band, the fact that Cigarette is their first album in five years is likely to be a cause of excitement.

Citing Daughters has become somewhat tarnished lately, in the wake of allegations against singer Alexis Marshall, which saw the band halting activity and him dropped by this label., but then, there likely a lot of people who aren’t aware of this, and moreover, it seems that even convictions and out of court settlements are no obstacle to becoming president of the United States, so perhaps a lot of people aren’t especially concerned by such things.

I’m not sure what The Giraffes have been up to for the last five years, or how they’ve managed to avoid my radar for the entirety of their career – after all, they formed back in the 90s, and released their debut album in ’98, with Cigarette being their eighth. But this is something that happens a lot: there are simply so many acts out there, it’s impossible to be aware of all of them. But we’re here now.

Some may say that five years is a long time to cook up just seven songs, but quality beats quantity, and Cigarette is solid and consistent in the quality stakes. There’s an abundance of drawling, stoner swagger. If ‘baby Pictures’ makes for a gentle start, they slam on the gas and go pedal-to-the-metal on the riffarola of ‘Pipes’, before ‘Limping Horse’ goes all out on the blues-driven scuzzy rock ‘n’ roll.

‘Dead Bird’ brings the requisite slow-tempo acoustic mid-album breather, and in doing so brings an almost folksy aspect to proceedings, while also strongly reminiscent of Alice in Chains in the harmonies.

Revisiting politically-charged single cut ‘Million Year Old Song’ in context of the album, and realising grimly how much can change in just a few weeks, it clicks that I’m reminded a little of Rollins Band with its sinewy lead guitar work and rant blasting over a low-slung groove.

It closes off with aa couple of six-minute epic sluggers, with ‘The Shot’ starting out with a delicate slow-burn but builds, snaking, smoking, and spun with a dash of flamenco and a swirl of drama into a writing monster of a track, before ‘Lazarus’ provides a worthy finale, with its atmospheric, almost post-rock epic intro that leads into a sultry strut that underlies a contemplation on death delivered in a gritty, Mark Lanegan-esque growl.

There’s a solid, vintage feel to Cigarette – which is to say it’s by no means ground-breaking, but while bands like this were ubiquitous in the ‘90s, now, they’re not so much. It’s not only nostalgia that means I miss them; there’s a place for this kind of chunky, dependable rock ‘n’ roll with a whiff of attitude and the perspiration of graft, and Cigarette is ultimately satisfying.

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Rip Space – Thank These People EP

Posted: 2 September 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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28th June 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

There are many reasons I’ve long been drawn to the obscure, the underground, the DIY – and many of those same reasons are why I try, wherever possible, to use my platform to champion those acts who fall within these broad brackets. And another thing I endeavour to use my platform for is the broader topics which relate to the releases – because during my life, I’ve become acutely aware of just how personal a thing music is, both to artist and listeners.

I suppose I first really tuned into this when I was around the age of fifteen: I’d started getting into goth and alternative stuff when I was twelve or thirteen – back when the weekly singles charts and Top of the Pops rules, and the likes of Killing Joke and The Sisters of Mercy and The Mission would make incursions into these realms – and was getting into live music. None of my mates were into the same stuff, so my choices were, go on my own, or don’t go. I decided I didn’t need my mates, but I did need to see the bands. This essentially set the template for my life, taking a position of a willing outsider.

Not everyone gets to be so willing in the place they find themselves, and while Rip Space’s biographical info is sparse, there’s a clear sense that they’re here as much out of compulsion as choice, describing themselves as an ‘anonymous autistic Scottish multi instrumentalist’. They outline how ‘Thank These People is an EP inspired by the catharsis of overcoming otherisation, public humiliation and otherwise targeted acts of evil that resulted ultimately, in official diagnosis in 2021… So this EP is called Thank These People. We make lemonade from the lemons life gives us. And in ways, we can decide to be thankful for the lemons.’

It’s hard not to find this apparent level of positivity and optimism quite staggering and more than a little overwhelming, as I fight the personal urge not to frame my own experiences as, rather than ‘thank these people’, but ‘fuck these cunts’. Ripspace has already demonstrated that they’re a better, less bitter human being than I before I’ve even heard a note… And then I heard a note, and I love Ripspace all the more. Amidst a roaring blast of lurching, distorted black metal guitars and crashing percussion there’s that anguished vocal howl. This… this is the sound of rage, of fury. Thanks? Yeah, right. This is a throbbing middle finger. This is what you’re thinking, what you want to say but muzzle because you don’t want to rile your boss. Because your boss is a twat.

Thank These People contains just three songs, and has a running time of under ten minutes – meaning it would fit comfortably on a 7” in old currency (when a 7” cost a couple of quid, although I’m not about to embark on a nostalgia trip, not now of all times, when nostalgia for the time of £1 pints costs £350 a ticket).

‘The Green Ripper’ really captures the vibe of Touch & Go and Am Rep in the 90s, but with a keenly Scottish lilt, and transitions from spoken word to full metal fury in a blink. And you feel the fury as it seethes and rages and roars, a pure, splenetic outpouring. ‘Welcome to Mother Earth’ is a noise-rock math-mash thrash-frenzy, Metallica in a three-way high-speed collision with Shellac and And So I Watch You From Afar. Thank These People spits, roars, foams, burns. And I have to agree when they add that ‘also, the music video is really good.’

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