Labels: self released
Review by: Andy Malcolm
This one has been sitting in the review pile for ages, and I figured I’d take pity on it rather than throw it in the bin with some of the unreviewable crap we receive as it really ain’t that shabby. Dead Cats Dead Rats bowl through 9 songs in 20 minutes here of excitable, riffy grunge. And I’d think this was quite a lot of fun, but the vocalist veers between tolerable and disappointingly whiney (on the first track he even sounds like the guy in Arctic Monkeys, *shudder*). But when these guys are on track, they play punchy, flamethrower toting grunge rock that isn’t really a million miles from something like Inch, and somewhat less miles from a rather more obvious comparison. The slower stuff is not quite as thrilling, but it generally has enough heaviness sitting alongside the melody to to keep my interest. I’m kind of interested to know why they tracked us down, they are from the US Boston and on Myspace they aren’t on of those bands with 20,000 friends and some press dude flogging them to all and sundry. They just seem like one of those local bands that is appreciated by a few folk who are happy enough to cram into a small basement or other venue and rock out for twenty to thirty minutes whilst getting off their tits on a preferred substance. Anyways, this is a solid listen bar a couple of drearier tracks, and should be appreciated by people who enjoy moshing wildly whilst sporting lank greasy hair and a lumberjack shirt. There are times when I fall into that category, for sure.