Labels: Finger Recordings
Review by: Alex Hannan
Debut 7″ from WHITE FINGER, a Nottingham outfit who, judging by their social media, like, amongst other things, a drink, and THE MUMMIES. The four songs here take a few different tacks in the songwriting, from the craggy, repetitive mono-chord pounding of the title track through the nihilistic stonerism of “Prey for death” to the careering garagey riffing of “Love letter” – but the general sound is reminiscent of PISSED JEANS’ sleazy swagger and sounds quite American, especially on “Prey for death” (a.k.a. PREY FOR DAY-UTH.) There’s a feeling of general bleed-through sleaze from bassist “JG”‘s other project GUILTY PARENTS. Obnoxious guitar lines slide like splinters under your fingernails, while the vocalist fights waves of reverb like a drowning man, yelling about the occult and taking drugs you probably shouldn’t.
The title track is the longest of the four, and manages to craft its static chord structure into a varied song by layering texture, ebbing and flowing from obnoxious chanting noise rock through instrumental lulls and verses threaded through with needling keyboards. Deep fried riffing with asymmetrical phrasing keeps the first half of “Prey for death” pleasantly spiky but the move into repetitive triple time for the second half of the song drags a bit. “Love letter” introduces desperate-sounding dual vocals and reaches mid-paced HC speeds, a blast of energy in the right place, but last song “Time to sleep” is a slight case of diminishing returns, using ideas we’ve already seen from the band but in less catchy form. I didn’t get the two extra tracks I was promised from the download. Boo. But will be enjoying returning to the majority of the four that I did get. Yay.