A direct antithesis to the proposition that post rock is a genre reserved for those aloof, apathetic and just a generally a little bit insufferable, the Northern Irish quartet present a take on a genre that’s euphoric and alive. It’s instrumental rock to pit to, dance to, and most importantly, feel a connection to. It’s this connection, that has allowed And So I Watch You From Afar to become more or less de facto figureheads of the UK post rock scene. Yes, they might not have the massive stature of Mogwai or so, but it’s this almost pliable connection running through their craft that makes them such icons. Their latest record Megafauna is an embodiment of this.
Released earlier this year via Pelagic Records, Megafauna is essentially what it says on the tin. A gurt stomping record, it’s impossible not to feel the massive heart of the album beating across its run time. Motifs of joy, tenderness, sentimentalism and nostalgia run through its bloodstream, odes to the power of gentle embraces and giddy roughhousing are enlivened through its delicate ambience and distorted riffs. It may be purely instrumental, but it’s a record of emotion, bound by human hands and a love for connection, a collective body of work paying homage to the people and places the band call home. But as the band, explain, it was recorded in a time where such connection was off limits.
“I suppose while we were writing it, which was in lockdown, I think those are the things we became really sort of conscious or mindful of,” states guitarist Rory Friers during a chat at ArcTanGent Festival this summer. “We weren’t spending time with groups of people, our peers and friends and family that you’re used to spending time with. That really created a sense of appreciation for those people and those places. When we were writing [the album], those were the kind of places that were in our mind’s eye. We just wanted to pay a bit of a tribute to how much those places, and more importantly the people within them, mean to us. It was a way to sort be spending with those people in your thoughts, creating a closeness that couldn’t be there.”
“It was written in a real time of uncertainty, where we didn’t know when we’d be getting out on the road again or seeing people that we’ve met and friends we’ve made across the world”, continues drummer and percussionist Chris Wee. “That was a big part of it as well. We were all thinking, will anybody be able to ever hear this live?”
Scottish pop rock duo Vukovi have recently unveiled their upcoming new album My God Has GotA Gun and ‘Misty Ecstasy’ is the latest taste of it. Visually inspired by Saltburn and musically a sensual, empowered reclamation of bodily autonomy, ‘Misty Ecstasy’ takes the raucous energy of Vukovi and distils it into another riff-fuelled dance rock hit designed to challenge the rising misogynist rhetoric becoming increasingly normalised. The band call it “the most fun/tongue-in-cheek song we’ve created”, further stating, “we wanted to put out something that could cut through a very dark and uncertain time for this day and age. Sex should be fun and safe without judgement. Our body our choice”. – Will Marshall
The New York art deco death metallers are back with another psychedelic jazz fueled extravaganza with more whammy bar than a Dimebag Darrell convention. By now we all know to not trust predictability in the case of Imperial Triumphant, and they continue to change, even the small things move about like bubbles from the flaming spoon as you’re dragged through a stoner rock power chord affair back into the manic tapping of the opening salvo. The vocals have taken on new life soaring over the top of the guitars in a cult chant, lulling you into the typical dramatic psychotic break that Imperial Triumphant so effortlessly peddle. As an indicator of the new album this leaves you just wanting more, it’s going to be a wild ride and we’re just passengers who have to brace against the headrest and buckle in. – Rob Bown
You expect a few things when you approach any Pigsx7 track, down tuned stoner lumbering, reverby stadium like vocals, and an overall feeling of teetering on the edge of a Pacific northwest cliff clad in plaid. The new track ‘Detroit’ does not disappoint with its heavy droning presence, lumbering like a giant stone Goliath through a forest. This track has a slightly different energy to a lot of what’s come before, it’s even more doomy, even more gloomy and even more heavy. They even bring back the riff but slower for that ultimate squeezed facial expression to see the track out. – Rob Bown
If there was ever an adjective to aptly describe Benefits it would probably be relentless. After all, the band have expressed anger and disillusionment about the sorry state of everything with a kind of explosive fervour that could be dubbed as almost self-destructive. Ask any a fan of this band – they will no doubt tell how intense, confrontational and above all relentless Benefits are. This new single isn’t exactly that though, but its Benefits in every way possible. Smouldering and brooding, ‘Relentless’ is the latest track to be taken from the duo’s forthcoming record Constant Noise and see’s Benefits transplanting their apprehension and bubbling rage into a more palatable sound that borders upon being sleek and danceable. But behind the danceable tones reminiscent of that of the The Streets and even Underworld lies the unmistakable snarl and bile of a collective sick of this world. Its a fantastic dichotomy, and one that further pays credence to how Benefits are one of the most exciting and fresh names in UK contemporary music. – Dan Hillier
The latest offering from the described ‘neo-jazz wrecking crew’, Moon is Doom Backwards is a record that doesn’t really comply with standard conventions. To try to slap a genre tag on it and be done with it would be a silly endeavour. Rather, it would be more fitting and far easier to describe the scenarios and situations that this record sounds like. These include the quiet cry of a phone ringing in the dead of night and the apprehension it invites. Or maybe the sudden stillness of encountering a possibly lifeless body discarded in an empty street at 4am. Odd scenarios indeed, but ones that perfectly indicate the trepidation, surrealism and inherent absurdism of the new record from Sly & The Family Drone.
A lurking, patient and lurching record, Moon is Doom Backwards sits somewhere in the weird unquantifiable ether that is the liminal space between avant garde neo-jazz and all-annihilating noise rock. Employing the teachings of musique concrète, here, Sly & the Family Drone inhabit the architecture of negative space and musical shadow in order to present ambience in its most maximalist form. It’s a record of noir quietude and overt meltdowns, one in which periods of loosening restraint engross more than they invite in thanks to its apprehension and possibility of violence. Basically, it’s the jazz equivalent of seeing bulldozers outside your house, but choosing to stay inside your home to see what would happen when they finally crash through the wall.
Moon is Doom Backwards is released via Human Worth, with 10% of all proceeds going towards the charity Melanoma UK and their critical work supporting those affected by the disease. Pre-order the record here, and stream Moon is Doom Backwards early excursively below.
Few bands can inspire the fervor from a new track as Sheffield’s Malevolence. The Yorkshire pit antagonists aren’t making their devoted fans wait for as long between records anymore and though there’s not an official announcement yet, it’s a safe bet that ‘Trenches’ is the first taste of something new from the band. Vocalist Alex continues to show why he’s one of, if not the best in the business at the moment with every syllable dripping with venom and you can almost see the crowd going crazy. It wouldn’t be a Malevolence track with some lethal guitar parts or some of Konan’s pained, gritty vocals and on those fronts, it doesn’t disappoint. Finishing off with a city levelling breakdown, it’s the perfect track to keep fans sated yet whet appetites for what’s to come in 2025. – Chris Earl
Bristol’s favourite power trio Blank Atlas return with their latest single ‘If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them’, a riotous post-hardcore inspired riff fest with all of the lush vocal harmonies the band have become known for. Clocking in at just under two minutes, the Blank Atlas boys fly through their new single like they’ve got to run for a bus at the end with drummer Tom Thould providing a rapid rhythmic backbone to the Reuben inspired machine gun guitar riffs. With Blank Atlas moving into a new era following their 2023 debut album, the future is bright for one of the UK’s brightest young alt rock bands. – Tom Bruce
Distorted feedback seeps in through the mire of Praetorian’s new track, ‘Fear and Loathing in Stevenage’ before a bludgeoning start sinks into a slow blackened sludge dirge much akin to UK doom specialists Wallowing. The latest track from the Hertfordshire foursome is a brilliant mix of punky grind, atmospheric dissonant black metal and drippy gooey sludge that is sure to please anyone willing to lend their ear to it. The new album Pylon Cult is due out at the end of January next year, hopefully with a stint of gigs, this music is crying out for the stage where its visceral delivery can be laid bare for all. – Rob Bown
Thank, or The Rock Band Thank from Leeds should one be of a more formal disposition, have long been somewhat of a unique proposition. Sometimes too noisy and abrasive for those who intrigued by their post-punk associations, yet often too danceable for those wishing for musical extremities, the Leeds bunch have long inhabited a small niche of their own creation. A disastrous place to be for some – especially in an age where lasting impressions are cemented from quick glimpses of art spoon fed by algorithms – but for Thank, it’s here that’s probably the best place to be. I Have A Physical Body That Can Be Harmed proves this wonderfully.
The new record from the rock band, I Have A Physical Body That Can Be Harmed is pretty much a collection of contrasts that compliment and alienate. Humorous yet misanthropic, grating but grooving and agitated but cooly composed, the record takes the post-punk tag and realises it literally, ignoring all pre-existing conventions. It’s a bending, shifting and wonderfully chaotic record in thanks to it’s refusal to comply with standard norms, and as a result, it’s an album that’s just effortlessly intriguing. Thank don’t fit in, but why should they. I Have A Physical Body That Can Be Harmed isn’t a record that fits, and that’s the point.
With I Have A Physical Body That Can Be Harmed out now via Big Scary Monsters, we got in touch with vocalist Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe to break down the record, track by track.
Related: Thank – I Have A Physical Body That Can Be Harmed | Album Review
A lot of our songs are the result of combining a bunch of older abandoned ideas. You can try a million different arrangements or structures for a song, sometimes over a period of years, and it never quite clicks, then you decide to smash a couple of them together and suddenly it all comes together in like half an hour. This was one of those songs; the vocals in the first half are almost directly lifted from a song we scrapped from the last album called ‘Micro/Macro’, and the riff at the very end was originally a Blood Incantation-style death metal pastiche I was divinely inspired to write when I started playing a pointy guitar again for the first time in about a decade. That riff got turned into a failed attempt at a d-beat song, and then a failed attempt at a Lumpy Records-style hardcore tune which the other guys all refused to play because it sounded like circus music, and then eventually… this. Have you seen TV On The Radio playing ‘Wolf Like Me’ on Letterman?
I imagine probably the worst part of being in a band with me is that if you reject one of my terrible ideas I will simply take it to another project. I recently started playing bass in a band called Solderer, but before we had a name I was quite adamant that we should be called either Woke Simpsons or Woke Frasier, and my bandmates quite strongly disagreed. Solderer’s loss is Thank’s gain, I suppose! Musically this one is primarily a Lewis (Millward, guitar and synth) composition, I think he has set himself the goal of making us sound gradually, subtly like a guitar version of British Murder Boys, almost undetectable until five years from now when I wake up one morning and all our instruments have been replaced by analog hardware. He thinks he’s slick, he thinks I don’t know, but I know. Lyrically it’s sort of a PSA spoken in scare-quotes from the perspective of a right wing podcast grifter.
Cut from the band’s forthcoming EP Welcome to the New Dark Ages, Part 2 – self-released November 22nd – ‘The Killing Floor’ is as murderous and as bloodthirsty as it’s lyrical concept. A condemnation of the dog-eat-dog culture we have fostered, where preying and feeding upon your fellow human is a widely acceptable way to obtain success, the track’s seething amalgamation of prog inclined death metal and bludgeoning hardcore is as vicious as it’s lyrical theme.
It’s the video that makes all this visually evident though. A satirical and aptly gory parody of infomercials of olde, the video for ‘The Killing Floor’ takes inspiration from the works of Cronenberg, Carpenter and Verhoeven in the way it quite literally visualises our modern predatory culture and how we fundamentally treat each other like nothing more disposable pieces of meat.
“The Killing Floor is the second song from our upcoming new EP”, state Beyond Grace on the single. “Welcome to the New Dark Ages, Part 2‘ (the second part of the New Dark Ages trilogy). Inspired by the works of Nancy Fraser and Agustina Bazterrica (among others) it’s all about the ways in which capitalism, by its very nature, can only continue to exist by feeding on itself and, in turn, forcing us all to feed on each other if we’re to survive within this system.”
“Visually the video (shot as always by our good friend Eric of ERD Visual Media) is obviously heavily influenced by the holy trinity of Verhoeven, Carpenter, and Cronenburg, and also allowed us to expand upon the central metaphor of “we are what we eat” by hinting at all the ways in which women, in particular, are often viewed as disposable/interchangeable and encouraged to sell each other out for the next opportunity (in a fun coincidence the second half of the video, which involved our two models Fay Dempsey and Liz Taylor, was shot the day after we’d been to see Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, which deals with similar themes).”
“It’s a heavy song, with some heavy themes and thoughts behind it… but that’s exactly how we like it!”
Beyond Grace’s new EP Welcome to the New Dark Ages, Part 2 releases November 22nd independently.Pre-order the record via Bandcamp, Ampwall and Spotify, and watch the video for’ The Killing Floor’ exclusively below.
