Categories
Music News

Girl Band detail debut album

Girl_Band

Dublin’s finest purveyors of noise, Girl Band, have finally announced details of their highly anticipated debut album. Holding Hands With Jamie is due for release on September 25th, almost a year on from their December 2014 signing with Rough Trade back in December, and will feature nine previously unrecorded tracks.

Since blowing our heads off at the Old Blue Last back at the start of 2014, Girl Band have consistently delivered some of the most creative and exicting sounds we’ve heard throughout the year, and this debut is sure to be nothing short of a smash. Get your pre-order in here for a chance to grab one of 250 limited edition yellow presses, each coming with a photo book to match.

Holding Hands with Jamie Tracklist:
1. Umbongo
2. Pears For Lunch
3. Baloo
4. In Plastic
5. Paul
6. The Last Riddler
7. Texting An Alien
8. Fucking Butter
9. The Witch Doctor

Forthcoming UK & IE Tour Dates:
3/11 Patterns w/ Prom, Brighton
4/11 Soup Kitchen w/ Prom, Manchester
5/11 Nation of Shopkeepers w/ Prom, Leeds
7/11 Button Factory w/Paddy Hanna, Dublin
6/10 100 Club w/Prom, London
25/09 Bar Sub w/Paddy Hanna, Belfast

Categories
Features Music

Introducing: GANG

gang_silverback

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?

gang_featureTy 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.
silverback
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.

Silverback is out now on Sexx Tapes.

gang_Carolina_Faruolo
Photo Credit: Carolina Faruolo

Categories
Live Reviews

Metz live at The 100 Club

metz_100METZ live at The 100 Club,

March 3rd 2015

Canada’s output of noise is nothing short of stunning, throughout history countless amazing bands have consistently travelled to our shores and shook us little Englanders senseless with deadly doses of feedback and fuzz. From D.O.A to Fucked Up, when the Canadians come to town, you know it’s going to get ridiculously loud.

Tonight makes no exception to the rule with Metz wreaking total havoc within seconds of scaling the stage. Their riffs are nothing short of earth shaking, and that’s the thing that sets them far apart from their support bands tonight and every other band that chose to sit on the fence – Metz radiate with a pure, palpable energy with every hit they cook up. From the opening notes of ‘Dirty Shirt’ the whole band are drenched in sweat, frontman Alex Edkins is a man possessed, scrambling around the stage wrestling with his Jazzmaster as if it were a boa constrictor, while the impermeable rhythm section provides a total masterclass in speed and agility.

Righteous crowd pleasers come in the form of 2011 album cuts ‘Wasted’, ‘Knife In The Water’ and ‘Headache’, the opening drum pattern of which has the audience chanting along with the volume of Arsenal at home in an instant. It’s not all safe bets though, Metz offer a delicious preview of new material from their forthcoming album, with the recently teased ‘Acetate’ exploding like a bullet from a gun. And it’s welcomed with open arms as the audience continue to catapult each other through the air as though it were an old favourite.

The prowess and energy these three Canadians exude with every riff, snare crack and scream tonight is truly remarkable. Though the crowd are a mere fraction of the size compared to our 2013 encounter at Village Underground, Metz rule the width of The 100 with ease.

Dave Palmer

Categories
Buzz Chart Single Reviews

METZ

metzII

METZ
‘Acetate’
Sub Pop

After what feels like an eternity, Toronto’s most wanted are back. These three peddlers of noise have had us all on tenterhooks since their 2012 debut shook the earth with a colossal helping of riffs, rawness and power, and today marks their triumphant return in the form of ‘Acetate’, the most frenzied four-minutes you’re guaranteed to hear this week.

‘Acetate’ picks up right where tracks like ‘Wet Blanket’ and ‘Wasted’ left off. Their unmistakeable guitar and bass grind fused with head busting drums creates a sound only describable as manic. The track leads METZ’s second album, fittingly titled METZ II, which is due May 4th via Sub Pop and will feature the artwork pictured here.

Watch their new pancake-focused visual below and do whatever you must to get a ticket for their sold-out show at The 100 Club on March 3rd.

Metz II Track Listing:
1. Acetate
2. The Swimmer
3. Spit You Out
4. Zzyzx
5. IOU
6. Landfill
7. Nervous System
8. Wait in Line
9. Eyes Peeled
10. Kicking a Can of Worms

Categories
Buzz Chart Reviews

Destruction Unit

Destruction Unit

Destruction Unit
‘Final Flight’
Sacred Bones

Forever kicking and screaming their way to the forefront of modern noise rock, Arizona’s Destruction Unit blew our minds when they were last in London for the release of Deep Trip in 2013. Now, they bring us a new music video that recalls the mayhem of their live show perfectly. Directed by Cali Dewitt, the visuals on offer here are nothing short of mesmerising, transcending to a higher realm by way of a warped desert ritual, growing increasingly intense as layers of feedback and fuzz are built sky high.

Those who reside stateside can catch them on tour through March at the dates below. We eagerly await their return to the UK.

March Live dates
8th Las Vegas, NV
9th Albuquerque, NM
10th Dallas, TX
11th Memphis, TN
12th Nashville, TN
13th Chicago, IL
14th Columbia, OH
15th Austin, TX
16th Austin, TX
17th Austin, TX
19th Phoenix, AZ
20th Los Angeles, CA