Bringing together members of Heavy Temple, Morgul Blade and intensive noise-makers Narcos Family Band, Straight Red is a US-based hardcore punk outfit who are obsessed with British OI! punk and football – or as the Yanks call it, “soccerrr”. The mix of influences and talents doesn’t bode very well from the outset. A lot of OI! punk – a fixture during the second wave of punk in the UK – as its name suggests, eschews many of the genre’s better elements in favour of gang based shouting designed to rouse the crowd, and the football theme applies a concept here that further reduces any broader appeal the punky material might have had. Luckily, at just six tracks and just a little shy of fifteen minutes, as irksome as this EP is in places, it’s a musical assault that’s mercifully brief.
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Rare Breed revisit classic pop punk sounds on ‘Out of The Question’
Originally released a year ago, Rare Breed’s ‘Out of The Question’ is a pop punk banger that’s now getting a much deserved second round of promotion as part of Reaction Management’s brace of summer singles.
TWENTYTWENTYSIX – Fake It Till You Make It
As the author of the Marillion biography ‘Separated Out’ and the Rush history ‘Strange Chemistry’, writer Jon Collins has been well known to prog rock fans for decades. Those fans are less likely to know Jon for his poetry, or be aware of his work as a musician, but he has been rather wise in choosing to apply his writing talents to different media. After all, if you stick to the same thing, you’ll eventually end up stuck in an uninteresting rut.
BOULDER FIELDS – With All The Other Ghosts
Singer songwriter Cam Fraser has had a long career on the fringes of stardom. The cult musician first became known to some as a member of The Cataran, a band whose three albums gained the band a following in the 80s, and he latterly ventured further into the realms of jangly indie as a member of Borrowed Books, whose 2020 album presented a timeless sound where a very 90s feel was underscored with occasional folk-rock rhythms, taking influence from Lou Barlow’s Folk Implosion. Under the name Boulder Fields, Cam explores the avenues of Americana – albeit from a Scottish perspective – going deeper into the folky, but without losing his roots, and although 2024’s ‘With All The Other Ghosts’ sometimes values atmosphere over immediacy, his sense of melody and lyricism often comes through in massive waves.
TRAUM – Traum
Bringing together members of Fuzz Orchestra, Zeus, Lento and Zu, German band Traum aren’t light on musical talents. On their debut album, the collective explore a broad soundscape of space rock, desert rock and stoner to create a heavily atmospheric work. Perhaps most impressively, unlike some of their peers, they don’t feel it is always necessary for their musical explorations to stretch out into hugely lengthy jams. There are longer works shared, but the bulk of ‘Traum’ shares shorter, accessible pieces, and in doing so, really helps to create a user friendly record from a sometimes less than user friendly style.