Labels: X-Mist
Review by: Alex Deller
Having passed through the gnarled hands of enough strange, twisted and willfully obtuse bands over the years it’s no real surprise that Wrangler Brutes have been cranking out some pretty fine music during their time together. “Zulu’ has them tidying their sound a touch, easing up on the distortion and making themselves slightly more coherent without losing any of the boisterous energy or garbled fervour that made their cassette such a rollicking listen. Black Flag’s surly spectre looms close as the Brutes peel off their blisteringly irreverent hardcore punk, occasionally trading the three-chord fuck you’s and lurching slow parts for scatty Circus Lupus-style weird-outs or other such bouts of protracted strangeness, all while Sam McPheeters’ heckles and pillories his audience with enough caustic blather to convince us he may well be the closest thing hardcore gets to Mark E. Smith’s cantankerous ravings. Nerve-jangling, strange and flippantly brilliant, this is punk rock just about as good as it gets.