Tag Archives: stream

THE GAMBLERS – Tonight / Let Your Yeah Be Yeah

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As a fixture within the punk underground, Booze & Glory have spent years carving out a niche with a street punk sound that crosses the more melodic aspects of Rancid with Swingin’ Utters. For lovers of that style, B&G have more than succeeded in sharing a world of rousing hooks.

A new project launched in 2024, The Gamblers finds the band’s vocalist – the mononymed Mark – branching out into the world of reggae. Their first release gives listeners a really well formed and direct example of the band’s sound, and by coupling a self-penned workout with a tune that’ll be familiar to almost everyone, it provides an easy entry point into their catalogue.

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ECCE SHNAK – Shadows Grow Fangs EP

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When a band re-appears after a long time away, it often leads to fan apprehension. The return of a favourite act can be exciting, but what if the new material isn’t up to scratch? What if it’s really different from the old stuff? What if, as a listener, it’s your ears that have moved on, and you now crave different thrills? None of these concerns apply to the return of New York’s art rock band Ecce Shnak. The five years since their ‘Metaphorphejawns’ album assaulted an unsuspecting audience hasn’t diluted their desire to bend sounds into almost impenetrable shapes and, at its best, their ‘Shadows Grow Fangs’ (released in February 2025) presents material that’s as unclassifiable and inventive as ever.

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MORLOCKS – Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi EP

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In terms of musical interest, Morlocks’ 2023 LP ‘Praise The Iconoclast’ didn’t sell its listeners short. On the stand out track, ‘I’m The Payload’, the band managed to fuse orchestral sounding synths to a relentlessly mechanical rhythm, before loading the arrangement up further with alt-pop vocals, 80s keys and a few rock-edged guitars. The result sounded at times like an industrial band channelling early Oingo Boingo, with a couple of vocal phrases in the latter part of the number that hinted at a love of KMFDM. Rather fittingly, that legendary band’s Käpt’n K would also make an appearance on the record, and somewhat predictably, his presence throughout ‘Mean World Syndrome’ leant that number more of a KMFDM flavour. Elsewhere, ‘Instigation’ swamped vocal samples with a heavy groove and nods to classic Ministry, and taking another curveball, ‘Cold War Fusion’ melded soundtrack-like elements and darkwave melodies into an epic closer that more than suggested this most cult of bands still had musical ground to cover somewhere in the not too distant future.

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BANDAGES – Bandages

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Back in the mid 00’s, The Messengers released an album that was pleasingly punchy but also lent a welcome sense of accessibility via its melodic punk sound. That self titled record harked back to the Tilt debut from ’94 and other great fare, and introduced the world to vocalist Shannon Wilson, a performer who clearly seemed destined for greatness. It was the sort of record that deserved the kind of success gained by The Distillers’ ‘Coral Fang’ and a couple of other releases around the same time, and yet it never seemed to garner more than a cult following.

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HISTORY OF GUNS – Little Miss Suicide (25) EP

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At the tail end of 1999, round about the time conspiracy theorists thought the turn of the millennium would trigger the end of the world – or at the very least, stop everyone’s computers from working – an independent band from England masquerading under the provocative name History of Guns released their debut EP ‘Little Miss Suicide’. It presented some fairly rough around the edges alternative sounds, drawing from goth, industrial and rock, and would lay the foundations for future endeavours. For those keeping a close ear to the alternative underground, HOG would continue to make interesting musical waves. At their peak of the first part of their career, they were even invited to remix a track by ex-Marillion frontman Fish, bringing together two disparate musical words, proving that – at least to those with open minds – music knows no boundaries.

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