Labels: Barely Regal – Dingleberry
Review by: MH
It’s not been long since Plaids called it a day towards the end of last year but here we have one of the first new bands to sprout from that thread. Across the band members you can also count time in Akallabeth, The Blue Period and What Price, Wonderland? (a change in drummers means I can count both Akallabeth and The Blue Period here). The sound here bears plenty of resemblance to Plaids and that’s hardly surprising with Joe Caithness’s vocals leading the tracks. The energy of Plaids is here too but there are spacier moments, sudden tempo changes and tangents along the way – something that Plaids began to explore on their LP but it’s given a little more room to breathe here. The first indication of this is precisely 60 seconds into opener “Druyan”. The bristling energy of the opening minute is switched to a more deliberated second half with a prettier guitar sound. The sound here has a thinner and more sparse side – it’s somewhere between Plaids and What Price, Wonderland? in that sense, but there are plenty of nods to 90s emo and the kind of riffs you’d hear on an Assfactor 4 record. Don’t forget the sound of a departing train either which appears in the background here and there. The prettier guitars crop up regularly along the way too – see towards the end of “Zapain”. “Cleeve Prior” is the one I would say is the best track on here. In stages, it is frenetic, pretty and driven. It has this kind of teetering guitar part halfway through which gives way to a twinklier part before tumbling back to its conclusion. The closing track drifts away gradually to close the EP. I realised years ago that bands split up and come and go, often when it seems they still have a lot to offer, but it’s worth keeping en eye out for what the members do in the future and this is no exception. Cracking start.