Labels: Crackle Records – Hermit
Review by: Tony Era
I’m going to open up with a reviewers best tool: a rubbish analogy. On the cover of this there are two identical faces looking in different directions and this is what you get with these two bands. Very similar but also very different. See, crap wasn’t it!
Anyway, Milloy kick things off with their brand of melodic kick ass punk rock. Its all about the crunching guitars with “that” sound, thundering drums and gruff vocals. Their 4 songs fire along and are pretty relentless apart from a few breakdowns here and there. Milloy also have that britishness in their singing voices ala the “tone and this is very cool.
My only complaint is that overall the songs could have done with a little more injection of pace. They aren’t slow by any means but sometimes I think the grooves would work better if they were faster. I’m sure this complaint would be solved in a live show though and it is only a small quibble in an otherwise sea of greatness.
To follow that is the four tracks from The Leif Ericsson and they blow Milloy out of that sea if you ask me. Same formula of gruffness, chunkiness and anthemic soaring vocals but its all just a bit better to be honest. Faster, more catchy a bit more fun.
A Hot Water Music comparison is in order but they do enough to distant themselves from a label of simply being generic. Its a subtle difference but again the Britishness of it all shines through, if I haven’t explained this well enough then just check it out.
I’ve read a lot that Leatherface, Hooton 3 Car and Broccoli et al were way ahead of their time. I sort of agree but when you hear releases like this you realise why. The new wave of bands playing this style are just phenomenal and keeping the mid 90s punk rock flag flying very high whilst also carving out an identity for themselves.
I love this kind of music when its done right and here it most certainly is. You could do a lot worse than pick this up for about a fiver and at the moment you would be hard pressed to find a better independent British punk rock release. That is until the Blocko full length comes out 😉