Perennial specialises in songs that take you by the shoulders and shake you for around one minute and 30 seconds, giving you a small chance to breathe and doing it all again. First album The Symmetry of Autumn Leaves came refined and focused, giving minimalist dance mod punk catharsis. Each release since has expanded the palette and process, and this fills out the guitar/drums/keyboard instrumentation with what feels like every notable keyboard and drum machine of the 20th century.
This record also stands as a love letter to the advancements in studio guitar sounds of the 20th century. The record is filled with guitar based sound design; feedback squeals are at their full power, each fuzz sound is perfectly raucous and tape reversal is used to its most psychedelic extremes. There is a power in hearing timeless production done well, although the energy of post-hardcore acts like The Blood Brothers courses through the album’s veins.
The purposeful minimalism of the arrangement lets each instrument take full effect, and they have posted run downs of the “materials” used on each song on social media. This is not minimalism by necessity, but by design. Each note played, each drum hit, each syllable sung is purposeful. Nothing is wasted. If Sleigh Bells is about a maximalist future, Perennial achieves the same catharsis in the exact opposite way.
Thou has been one of the most prolific bands in the sludge and doom metal scene, from collaborative works with Emma Ruth Rundle and The Body, to covers compilation albums; nonetheless this LP has been long awaited and we can affirm that the band did not disappoint their audience. Umbilical is the band’s first full-length release of original music in six years and it’s a much more concise piece of work compared to their past ones, while still keeping the complexity that distinguishes them. Interesting to see that here we don’t find any track that reaches seven minutes.
Let’s just start by praising the production, it is nothing less but impressive. The sound is so full of body, “echoey”, noisy but with plenty of clarity at the same time, which really helps giving justice to the musicians’ skills and the vocals. All the noise and torment in this album somehow also feels tidy and ready to be served on a golden plate for you to just sit back and enjoy.
What is also great about this collection of tracks is that there are no drawn out doom passages that could make you lose your attention. It is indeed a very intense and difficult album to get through but, even on the longer tracks, the incessant drumming and the top tier riffs manage to keep you engaged. Especially if you’re a person who’s not used to listening to doom or sludge, this album could really be the perfect body of work to start appreciating it.
On their third full-length album, Candy have made a name for themselves in the scene. And with the release of It’s Inside You it has propelled them to a whole new level of noisy creativity. Their mindset writing It’s Inside You boiled down to just a few ideas. Big, fun, and ridiculous – within the first three songs, they’ve nailed their goals.
Opening up the mind-boggling proceedings is ‘eXistenZ’. Landing just shy of a minute and thirty seconds it’s the introduction you need to Candy. Bold, brash, a frenzied mix of violent hardcore and digitized industrial confusion, you’re blasted in the face with the unrelenting nature that doesn’t give up across the next half hour.
Vocalist Zak Quiram spits venom across the entire album, and never more ferociously than on ‘Terror Management’. blurring the line between artistic performance and letting out built-up emotion. There are a few points on the album that are so left-field from what might be expected that make you just grin with utter disbelief and wonder how they got away with it. Case in point, the title track throws in some breakdance/core beats that resemble nu-metal styles from the late 90s or early 2000s.
We’ll Hold This Line Until Hell Freezes Over see’s Slash Fiction wearing their collective hearts on their sleeves. Which isn’t particularly surprising, especially given how their aforementioned 2021 debut Gender, Trauma & Friendship was more-or-less a wonderful and most bright exploration of the nouns that form the record’s title. But what is surprising is how well this record outshines it’s predecessor in essentially every capacity. Instead of lazily applying a thin, synthetic layer of polish and veneer to their existing sound and calling it a day, (like a few artists do when approaching their second record) Slash Fiction have consciously and clearly taken the time to improve upon their musical dynamism and their charismatic approach. And the end result is something utterly fantastic, joyous and cathartic indeed.
Bound by the thematic lyrical theme of the importance of solidarity in a time where division is not only rampant but culturally enforced by political powers, We’ll Hold This Line Until Hell Freezes Over is both a title and a mantra. It’s one repeated across the record amidst further ruminations on gender and mental turmoil, and one that addresses how such focusses on self apply to the nature of community. The way in which respective opener ‘We’ll Hold This Line’ leads into the chipper bounce of ‘Ashes’, makes this all evident from the offset. Masterfully engineered to get rooms bouncing along as one and energised with a tangible sense of energy that can only come from a band with a tangible sense of purpose, these tracks instantly showcase Slash Fiction’s now established penchant for creating delightfully raw emo that’s personal as well as communal. Truly, there’s something utterly remarkable in how Slash Fiction can make music that’s both deeply personal but designed to unite people collectively, something further established by the ever relatable self-deprecation of the high impact ‘Root and Fifth’, a track that harkens thoughts of Los Campesinos! in thanks to it’s synth-speckled musings and dry wit.
The long awaited follow up to the band’s 2019 EP Family Mammal, Hold My Hand, God Damn It – like the name implies – is a bit of a demanding and aggressive record. But given the circumstances it has every right to be. Not only did the pandemic suck the air right from Gaffa Tape Sandy’s sails just as they where about to embark on the EP’s promotional tour, but the years that followed also saw the band being battered by the repetitive waves of modern living as they tried to correct their course. And just as they made their way through the storm of the pandemic – their sails patched and frayed, albeit in one piece – they suddenly, like all of us, found the treasures of youth behind us. Gone where the spoils of the days when one could just play giddy and fuzzy indie-garage-punk all day; it’s a soggy pirates life of taxes, car insurance and trying to remember the right recycling days for ‘ye. But thankfully for us, Gaffa Tape Sandy are the persevering types and this record see’s the Brighton trio channeling that rage into record rich with purpose and hooks.
Whereas the EP aforementioned was an excitable record full of instantly unforgettable earworms and adolescent-like energy, this record is unmistakably made by adults; ones who still cling to youth like faded pearls with burning hatred for the ravaging of age. The opening ‘Body’ and proceeding ‘Scrapbook’ may sound akin to a product of Family Mammal on the surface, but with their slight bite and the former’s lyrical subject about stumbling upon a legitimate dead body and the trauma that follows, the tracks only indicate towards the more aggressive and naturally frustrated drive of Hold My Hand, God Damn It. Third track ‘Dead To Me’ is where the records sinks it’s teeth in however. Whilst the track may be one of the album’s pre-released singles, the snarling, venomous and barked delivery of how Gaffa Tape Sandy address the concept of discarding depleted friendships like carrion is still shocking given how it just comes out of seemingly nowhere. The chipper ‘Evil, Evil, Evil’ may counterpart this resentment, but this initial run of tracks bares witness to Hold My Hand, God Damn It’s best quality; it’s dichotomy between fun poppy hooks and burning frustration.
Hailing from South London and Oxford respectfully, adults and Spank Hair have become dotted entities within the UK’s burgeoning DIY indie pop scene over the past several years, and for good reason. Whilst each band may have their own distinctive sound formed from personal inspirations and experiences – adults coming from the flock of Johnny Foreigner and The Beths, Spank Hair carrying the essence of Algernon Cadwallader and Say Anything – their shared ability to charismatically document the experience of surviving in the vice grip of late stage capitalism and under the weight of mental turmoil is one and the same. To call them birds of a feather may be a cliched and pretentious idiom, but truly, despite their differences, their ability to create airy, jangly, joyful and carefree music from beneath the weight the world is a shared skill and one that’s just so endearing. Their new four track split EP …in the big league showcases this brilliantly.
Featuring two tracks from each band and clocking in at just over 10 minutes long, this record may be brief, but it is refreshing. Despite being trapped under the dead weight of capitalism, heads most heavy and an entire world set to crack any minute from the strain of countless pressures, adults and Spank Hair sound far from being exasperated here. Instead, they both sound laid back and flourishing; least on the surface anyway. ‘trouble’ and ‘discipline’, the two tracks courtesy of adults and first half of this EP present this wonderfully. Resonating that sense of sunny breeziness that’s reminiscent of recent breakout sensations SUDS, the fuzzy and delightfully slight lo-fi delivery helps offset the inherent emotion that drives these songs. However, they don’t dilute it, nor do they hinder it’s fluidity, something that’s highlighted in the more morose ‘discipline’, a track that sounds cool and collected, but host to something frantic within it’s lyricism and thematic manner of trying to keep it together amidst a life in constant motion.
