Review Corner

Category: Punk

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    Sons: Sweet Boy

    Sons hail from Melsele, Belgium, a country that also produced one of our favourite bands, heavy blues rockers Triggerfinger. Like Triggerfinger, Sons play high-energy music with a lot going on, except Sons are more at the punk / garage end of the sound spectrum. We suspect the marketing will be aimed at fans who like…

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    Berries: How We Function

    This excellent album is melodic, loud, fast, punky and just the right length. Musically the sound is somewhere between the better end of early punk / indie and early Foals, when math rock was still a thing. There are some nice heavy rock riffs in places, maybe not Black Sabbath but certainly a dark edge.…

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    Charlie Bit My Finger: Back and Fourth

    This Belgian pop punk band channel NOFX a little (and only a little), from the sound to the jokery with nomenclature – Charlie Bit My Finger is a famous internet video (child bites another) – while Back and Fourth is their third album. The sound is solid, mosh-pit pleasing, sing-along anthems to get sweaty to…

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    Percy: Monorail

    Percy are excellent. They’re billed as post-punk, but they’re merely old school punks, in the sense that they don’t really care about conventions and have a good sense of melody. Don’t expected Damned-style sonic assaults (which were, speak it softly, always a bit rubbish) or more modern punk with punch-in-the-face snare and kickdrum; the band…

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    Steve ‘n’ Seagulls: Another Miracle

    For those who don’t know, Steve ‘n’ Seagulls (think about it) are Finns who play proficient bluegrass while doing covers of famous rock tracks. We think their cover of AC/DC’s Thunderstruck made their name, but looking for information on this, we found it riding high in the US bluegrass chart, so it must be good…

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    Teen Creeps: Forever

    Teen Creeps are from Belgium but the sound of Joram De Bock, Ramses Van den Eede and Bert Vliegen is rooted in another land and another time: Northern Ireland, 1989, to be precise, because that is when Ash formed. Teen Creeps sound like they want to be the Ash of Belgium, though as Ash is…

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    Beans On Toast: Knee Deep In Nostalgia / The Unforeseeable Future

    Beans (aka Jay McAllister) normally drops one album a year but clearly lockdown has left him with little else on his plate and we get two. They’re both self-explanatory in their titles. Knee Deep In Nostalgia sees man-of-the-people poet and guitarist Beans looking back fondly at his past and his likes, from memories of favourite…

  • Idles: Ultra Mono

    Idles and Fontaines DC trod similar ground with their early music, enjoyable fist-in-the-air ramshackle punky rock making political statements. The DCs moved on to slicker fare with their most recent release but Idles have not; it’s still gnarly. When it works, it’s great; other times less so. Expressing working class anger at the state of…

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    My Grito presents … Mas Alto! A Charity Compilation

    This is in a good cause and is a more-than-decent album. The cause: sadly not a local one but still good: the album is raising cash for No Us Without You, a US charity providing food security for undocumented back-of-house staff and their families. “Undocumented hospitality workers are the backbone of the hospitality industry,” says…

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    Asylums: Genetic Cabaret

    Asylums first album Killer Brain Waves was great: heads down no-nonsense rock played fast and tight but with lots of melody and a nice DIY ethos about it; a good band having fun. They obviously did ok out of it (and the second, which we missed) and this new one sounds more expensively made ……