Wakefield’s Climbing Alice mix various alt-rock styles into a sound they self-bill as Alt-Popp. For the average listener, what this actually means is that they’ve taken a slab of post-grunge guitar noise, a generous helping of goth and a pinch of shoegazey jangle and come out winning. There mightn’t be anything overtly new about this band’s music, but – as evidenced upon this debut EP – it’s all played with a fiery passion…and most importantly, it’s got the riffs.
Tag Archives: alternative
RHYN – Absence EP
Working through a variety of styles and inflences on their debut EP, Buckinghamshire’s Rhyn are an interesting band. At first, their music displays a heaviness, but as ‘Absence’ plays through, each passing number shows a slightly different aspect to their songcraft. Here is a band who are capable of complexity, but understands that complexity for the sake of it just isn’t that interesting (Dream Theater, please take note). And although they prove straight away they can be crunchy and a little arty (as per Hawk Eyes and the earliest Biffy Clyro), at least one of their members understands the overriding importance of a chorus.
KRASSEVILLE – Nous Somme Faux
If members of a black metal band embarked on a project that sounded like a film soundtrack and then also channelled various bits of early 80s goth and Nick Cave, that would be a bit of a jumble, but a fairly cool one nonetheless. Such a rambling bag of ideas is the closest approximation of describing the sounds with which French band Krasseville fill their 2015 release ‘Nous Somme Faux’. It’s avant-garde for sure, yet at the same time, it’s also strangely listenable.
EUJENICS – Humanism
Nearing the end of 2014, The Creep Void released their ‘Elevation of Idiocy‘ EP. The band’s second – and final – release, its featured tracks were head and shoulders above anything on their ‘Apothesis’ album from 2012. With a decent production and some great riffs, it promised even more for their third release…but the band broke up, leaving such promises unfulfilled.
MASSACRES – Brutus EP
Formed at the beginning of 2015, London alt-metal band Massacres came a long way in a very short time. Their sound, an uncompromising blend of metalcore and hardcore punk intensities, quickly found an awaiting audience. For work on their debut EP, they also secured the talents of Jason Wilson, a producer of some renown whose studios had seen the likes of Cities, You Me At Six, Don Broco and Bellowhead working within. With a killer approach to making fairly uncompromising noise and a decent producer to help give things the ultimate send off, there was every chance that debut release could be a monster.