The opening titular song on the revocder EP by cowboyy quickly goes from chamber choirs into a free time jam into guitar pedal hell. The rest of the EP does not change tact from there. cowboyy makes the kind of music that only a new young band can, where the hunger is insatiable, and before the edges get sanded off. It is hard to avoid the comparisons, but so much of it does feel like the bastard child of Black Midi, Tera Melos and King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard. Technical music can so easily get very sanitised, especially with the recent endless accusations of edited performances and lacklustre live performances, but it’s hard to hear revocder as anything but the sound of 3 people in a room absolutely sending it.
The jam when second track bell pepper hell kicks off. Feeling like Devo with a double kick pedal, it’s not even two minutes long. It’s feral. The album doesn’t shy away from punk or blast beats, and is swimming in blasts of moshable chaos. First single ‘the chair mountain’ has a blast beat bridge, and compared to the hookiness of the rest of the song, it generates a similar feeling to the bridge of ‘Clouds’ by unpeople, despite how disparate the origins of the songs are. This could be the moment blast beats cross over into every genre. Despite the stop/start of many of the songs, the drumming of Dan Haysom really excels, and doesn’t ever feel like it is not serving the song.
Returning with what is their second album in Loving and Losing, the fearsome duo’s nearing approach is one quite dissimilar to that which they had for their debut. Coming from a writing process during a time before anyone had any Honey Revenge tours in their diaries to now attempting to one-up their breakout album – Honey Revenge face a completely different level of exposure and challenge due to their successes in recent years.
The added pressure of these new difficulties has not been lost on the duo as they have openly discussed the panic and stresses that came early on in the creation of this new record. Requiring a step back, the duo looked into the music of the early 2000s in an attempt to bring fun back into the music and fire to the flickering passion of creativity.
This can be seen clearly throughout the album as every track oozes with the swagger and playfulness that was so typical of 00’s party music. Loving and Losing is packed full of a bounce that is inherently impossible to not jump along to. With incredibly punchy drum tracks, groovy bass lines and a production quality that can only be referred to as immaculate, the entire album is such a fun listen.
Honey Revenge make wonderful use of space in their tracks, especially in the hook infused choruses of this album – so many of these new tracks aren’t afraid to let phrases sit with space around them. This both adds to that Y2K sound that we are coming to connect with Honey Revenge, as well as leaning into the danceability of this whole record.
In the history of a city that birthed metal as a genre, not to mention some very famous metal names, there is one that is perhaps the most acquired of such tastes, even for metalheads. A band whose entire modus operandi can be described – in an oversimplifying sort of way – as “it’s just noise – but in a good way”. From the dirty, smelly, often wretched heart of Birmingham’s heavily industrialised past comes the mighty Godflesh. Purveyor of industrial filth and seer of the common man, otherwise known as Justin Broadrick and Ben Green.
Decay is a well-named album that comes to us from a difficult spot in the Godflesh canon. It is one of two remaining studio albums that will form the last output of the band as an active entity, and the knowledge that the band’s days are numbered by Broadrick’s ill-health permeates Decay like a creeping fog. Contributing to this is the vocals in particular. Recorded before Broadrick’s hernia surgery, he is characteristically blunt about recording these vocals having been a struggle, and it’s a little eerie listening to a man doing what he is so well known for, while in pain, and for almost the very last time. With this much context around an album, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the music itself might well be something of an afterthought; that its existence makes it remarkable enough, it doesn’t need to be anything special on top of it all. You might, and you’d be wrong, because hernia or no, this is still Godflesh.
With an influence list as long as you like, Regional Theatre could have been in danger of overcomplicating an already varied sound – however, the band manage to walk that very thin line between convolution and innovation expertly. Following the drive to keep things fresh, The Fierce & The Dead offer up an album that manages to go way beyond the band’s seemingly limitless reach for influence and inspiration.
In a modern world of unending connection and potential interactions, Regional Theatre delves into the paradoxical nature of the extra barriers this new-world connectivity brings. Wielding insightful lyricism together with musical talents that could rival the Prog greats, The Fierce & The Dead create an incredibly atmospheric soundscape which manages to capture the feel of their thematic objectives beautifully.
On their second full-length album, LUGOSi expand the boundaries of their explosive post-hardcore, layering in post-rock, noise, math-rock and more. Complete with additional ornamentation they felt could only be achieved in the studio, they have established a sound that is textured, expressive and dynamically expansive.
Fans of Palm Reader, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Black Peaks and Gallows will find much to enjoy in LUGOSi, as the band blend mathy post-hardcore with cinematic post-rock and expressive musical ornamentation, delivering some exceptional individual flair and impassioned vocal performances.
Are you craving more punk in your life? Looking for something to fill that interminable wait before Bob Vylan or Soft Play releases a new album? Well, maybe you should check out another two piece, The Meffs. The duo of Lily Hopkins (vocals/guitar) and Lewis Copsey (drums/backing vocals) dropped their first demo album in 2020, and you could see the sort of socially and politically aware songwriting that would define their sound. Tracks like “Your English is Great” and “No.10 PM” which attacked racism and a number of UK prime ministers, respectively.
Following on from 2024’s debut album What a Life and 2022’s EP Broken Britain, Pt. 1 (no part 2 so far? Shame), The Meffs are back with their second full-length release, Business. If you were perhaps worried that they might have softened their approach or decided to maybe try and go more mainstream in the hope of gaining wider acceptance, you needn’t worry. This album sees the band continuing to rail against the ills of modern society, and the song writing is as in-your-face as it always has been, refusing to march to the beat of anyone else’s drum or conform to anyone’s idea of who they should be or how they should play. They even call this out in title track “Business”, ripping into companies that claim they want you to be your “authentic self”, but oh no, not like that. No, not in a way that isn’t acceptable to corporate interests or shareholders or doesn’t synergise with their brand or doesn’t fit the special little label they want to put on you.
