Some raging stuff right here, this Newcastle mob barfing out a glorious, noise-rock mess that recalls such big ugly buggers as Cherubs, Big’n and Pachinko. While others who’ve adopted this sound in recent times (Black Elk or KEN mode, say) have tended to let their ditties hover around the four or five-minute mark , Tide Of Iron channel everything into terse blasts of hardcore-infused brevity. Everything is taut and highly-strung, riffs angrily wrenched out like limbs from sockets and possessed of a weird wet n’ squelchy edge that adds to the unease rather than serving to dampen it. Icing on the cake is the bloke fronting the whole bastard din, his coarse, aggrieved screams seeming to just about hollow him out and lend things a sense of raw, unbridled desperation and might render him a shivering, empty husk by the end of it all but leave the rest of us smacking our livery lips and banging our cutlery on the table for more, goddammit, MORE.
