Millencolin, bless them, have never been the most original of bands. The Swedish quartet have freely admitted that, in the early days, they were huge NOFX fanboys who just wanted to sound as much like their heroes as possible. Fast forward a couple of decades, and they now often resemble Sweden’s answer to Bad Religion; be it in the oohs -n’-ahhs backing vocals, the gloriously melodic buzzsaw guitars, or vocalist/bassist Nikola Sarcevic’s willingness to open lyrical fire on society’s ills (check out the video for excellent anti-racism anthem ‘Sense & Sensibility’ below).
And you know what? It really doesn’t matter, especially when Millencolin continue to write smart, addictive songs as well as they do here. Whilst the band have hardly been slouching at home in the seven years since so-so previous record ‘Machine 15’, the time away has definitely done them plenty of good; the likes of the title track and ‘Chameleon’ see them sounding more fired-up than they’ve been in a decade, and the majority of the record measures up well against old classics like ‘No Cigar’ and ‘Bullion’.
Ultimately, True Brew sees Millencolin returning to their roots in damn fine style. Let’s drink to that.
Keeping in line with the current montage of Nirvana whirling around the media, the fantastic Robotic Empire label have revealed their second tribute to the band.
Following 2014’s take on In Utero, which featured an all star cast of Ceremony, Daughters and Jay Reatard, this time around, Nevermind is given the cover treatment.
Featuring a diverse range of acts from Torche’s low-end sludge rendition of ‘In Bloom’ to La Dispute’s post-hardcore ‘Polly’ drawl, via White Reaper’s thrashing ode to ‘Territorial Pissings’, there’s much gold to be found here. Especially in Young Widows’ thankfully innovative spin on ‘Teen Spirit.
Having just released his thirty fourth (!) studio album out of Jack White’s famed Third Man Studios, living legend Neil Young has today revealed his next endeavour will be to a collaborative album with Lukas and Micah Nelson, sons of iconic country musician Willie Nelson, for an anti-Monsanto album titled ‘The Monsanto Years’.
Ever urging his fans to boycott Starbucks, and openly criticising the food industry, the record is said to contain song titles such as ‘Rock Starbucks’, ‘Monsanto Years’ and ‘Too Big To Fail’ and is due for release on June 15th.
Watch this fan-filmed footage of a recent live appearance featuring material that is said to appear on the upcoming album.
Brighton via Canterbury fuzz peddlers, GANG, knocked our socks off with their screeching octofuzz prowess earlier this year, steaming past our peripherals with their electric new single ‘Silverback’. Upon delving deeper into their SoundCloud pages we found a treasure trove of mind bending noise, and managed to catch up with them to talk all things psych, and ask what’s next for this exciting new trio.
For those who haven’t heard your music before, how would you describe Gang in a sentence?
Gloomy tunes.
How, when and why did you three gentlemen come to be the Gang that you are?
We (Eric & Jimi) are brothers so we met when Eric was born. We met Joe two weeks before our first gig, and he stood in for another guy on bass who had drilled a hole through his hand. We kept Joe around for his perfect hands and his firm grip.
Is there one album/artist in particular that without, the band might never have come to be?
Ty Segall’s Twins was a big one for us because it opened us up to a lot of modern garage and psych music. Other than that we like a lot of different stuff – 60s psych/garage/pop (Gandalf, The Doors, King Crimson etc.), 70s Metal & punk (loads of Sabbath), 80s alternative rock (anything associated with Steve Albini like Slint and Pixies etc. and many others) leading into 80s/90s Seattle grunge.
There’s so much good underground music at the moment, probably because mainstream music is so dire right now. A band called Wand from California are tickling our pickles the most at the moment. We also listen to an unhealthy amount of stoner rock like Eyehategod, Electric Wizard and Melvins.
Your hometown has such a rich musical history, are there any particular Canterbury-scene bands you look to as influences?
Yeah, the way they all experimented with sonics was so sick. Joe’s dad was drinking buddies with Caravan, and Hugh Hopper from Soft Machine used to come round to Eric & Jimi’s dad’s little studio. We totally ripped Gong’s name by accident too.
So what made you up sticks from Canterbury and head south to Brighton?
Jimi had just finished his English Degree so the other two moved down after Joe got sacked for drinking too much tequila one night and rolling around on the floor. There wasn’t any music scene going on in Canterbury, though Margate in Kent started having some rad shows courtesy of Art’s Cool. We just moved down to be beside the seaside with our beloved drummer. That’s when we properly got our act together as a band because we were all in the same place, we hadn’t done much before that. That was exactly a year ago last month. Happy moving anniversary.
How would you describe Brighton’s music scene right now?
Everyone’s brothers in arms here, we all go to each other’s shows and have a jolly good time. Theo Verney, Fuoco, Tusks, Pink Lizards, Morning Smoke, Abattoir Blues, The Magic Gang, Demob Happy, Big Society, Kit Wharton, Munez and and probably loads of others who we can’t remember right now. How do you like to write? Is there a sole songwriter amongst you?
Jimi and Eric both write the songs and then we take them into the room and disfigure them. Jimi’s singing lead on the new tracks he’s written which is sweet but unfortunately they haven’t been released yet. Creamy dulcet tones.
Tell us about ‘Silverback’, what’s the track about, and how would you compare the ‘Silverback’ sessions to recording Sandscrape last year?
We’re all apes, man. I (Eric) actually record all of our stuff at my dad’s little studio, so it was pretty much the same process though I’d learned quite a lot since recording Sandscrape. We also recorded a version of Silverback with our buddy Theo Verney that’s on the cassette as well and it’s delightful. It’s actually the oldest song we still play but we thought we should put it out there before it died.
Your ‘Silverback’ video is a true mind-melter, what is the most mind melting experience Gang have had so far?
Making that video with our roomy Chris Wade of Dogbrain Videos was very intense and beautiful. Apart from that we’re pretty clean living, straight edge, polite young hermits.
Rad! So lastly, what can we expect from Gang next?
We’ve got a lot of pretty extreme stuff we’ve just recorded which we’re really pumped about that will be out sometime this year. No release plans yet, though we’ll be sorting that soon. We recently left the south for the first time at the beginning of this month to do shows in Leeds, Sheffield & Cardiff (Swn Festival) too, and we’ll be playing some lovely festivals over the summer. Also, one day we will all be dead.
Nottingham’s finest new purveyors of 90s indebted guitar fuzz, Kagoule, have announced their long-awaited debut album, Urth, for August 21st via Earache Records.
Following the band’s recent string of 7”s, first album cut ‘Gush’ see’s the trio careering through wonderfully weird and warped grunge-rock territories with gusto as they deliver powerful hooks above a scuzzy, off-kilter groove.
Pre-order the album here and catch them in the UK on the below dates.
Tour Dates
April
14 – London, Oslo W/ Balthazar
16 – Kent, The Ball Room
18 – Nottingham, Music Exchange
18 – Nottingham, Rough Trade
20 – Birmingham, The Oobleck w/ Nai Harvest + Best Friends
24 – London, The Shacklewell Arms
25 – Leeds, Berlgrave Music Hall
May
14 – 16 – Brighton, The Great Escape
22 – Manchester, Dot To Dot
23 – Bristol, Dot To Dot
23 – London, Fluffer Fest @ The Shacklewell Arms w/ Telescopes, LOOM, Demob Happy
24 – Nottingham, Dot To Dot
June
9 – London, Birthdays W/ Theo Verney
10 – Brighton, Prince Albert W/ Theo Verney
25 – Birmingham, One Beat Festival
Bursting out of the basements of Southern Alberta and into Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studios quicker than you can say, “It’s 1983, Grow Up!” Fist City are back with a brand new album titled Everything Is A Mess for June 22nd and we are very excited about it.
The first cut, ‘Fuck Cops’, is awash with their token guitar scuzz and hazey hooks, with a furious anti-racist, anti-police brutality mantra spat all over it. And if it’s anything to go by, the 16 other brand new tracks set to feature on Everything Is A Mess are sure to be bursting with just as much fizzing and impulsive energy as 2014’s sophomore, not to mention the on-stage antics they’re famed for. Catch them on tour at the below dates through May.
May
16th – Brighton, The Great Escape
18th – London, Alberta Showcase at The Islington
22nd – Liverpool, Liverpool Sound City Festival
25th – Leeds, Gold Sounds Festival
Everything Is A Mess is due June 22nd via Transgressive, be sure to pre-order the album here.
Pioneering art-punks WIRE have released a new music video for ‘Burning Bridges’, taken from their self-titled 13th album that was released this week via their own imprint, pinkflag.
Tonight the band begin their five-night headline residency at DRILL: LEXINGTON, and will play a string of shows across the UK from April 20th on the dates below.
April
20th – Southampton, Engine Rooms
21st – Ramsgate, Music Hall
22nd – Nottingham, Rescue Rooms
23rd – Liverpool, Kazimier
24th – Hebden Bridge, Trades Club
26th – Aberdeen, Lemon Tree
27th – Glasgow, King Tuts Wah Wah Hut
28th – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
29th – Manchester, Academy 3
30th – Bristol, The Fleece
It’s not often that you stumble across a band that love sludge, and space cakes, so much they launched a KickStarter to fund a trip into orbit as the first stoner rock trio to jam in outer space. Gnob are that band, and thank green we’ve found them, and their new EP, Temple Of Sinners – a mind-melting home brew of cosmic dirge that is guaranteed to blow your ears clean off.
Sadly, KickStarter denied their proposed £498,000 space ritual fund-raiser, but this bunch plough on to higher realms regardless. Opening track ‘Curse Of The Jester’ takes a treacherous plunge into some seriously evil aural gloop, before coming up for air to breath the kind of vocal you’d expect to find on Master Of Reality. Bridging the gap between this filthy offering, and the bold psychedelic dimensions that lay ahead, though, is ‘Ceremony’. Five minutes of what’s only describable as shamanic, almost recalling the sitar-like noodling prowess you’d expect to hear hailing from the mystic Goat commune.
As if your ears weren’t smouldering already, ‘Temple Of Sinners’ morphs into a ten-minute psychedelic close, building Sleep-indebted riffs to monolithic heights before hurling into a wonderful haze of warped eastern jams.
Hit play below and let Gnob’s sludge ooze (careful) from your speakers. There’s nothing short of a masterclass in the dark arts of sludge, doom and psych to be found here.
Following the chaotic introduction of their debut track, ‘Hungry Heart’, London’s Yak have announced their debut EP Plastic People for May 25th, and served another head melting slice of their delicious garage rock to match.
‘Smile’ sees the trio loose and laid back over a near-four minute jam that creeps and crawls like Iggy Pop on a guest vocal with the Bad Seeds. Stream it here and catch them on tour through May at the dates below.
April
29th London, St Moritz
30th Nottingham, Bodega Social Club
May
1st Manchester, Soup Kitchen
5th Newcastle, Cluny 2
6th St Albans, The Horn
8th Bristol, The Louisiana
9th Exeter, The Cavern
13th London, St Moritz
16th Brighton, The Great Escape
22nd Liverpool, Sound City
MILLENCOLIN
Whatever Nevermind
Ty Segall’s Twins was a big one for us because it opened us up to a lot of modern garage and psych music. Other than that we like a lot of different stuff – 60s psych/garage/pop (Gandalf, The Doors, King Crimson etc.), 70s Metal & punk (loads of Sabbath), 80s alternative rock (anything associated with Steve Albini like Slint and Pixies etc. and many others) leading into 80s/90s Seattle grunge. 
Fist City
