Strike A Match - demo - Tape (2011)

Labels: self released
Review by: Alex Deller

This one’s been sitting on my tape stack for a few months now and there’s really no reason for it to have languished in such a way. Hell, of the however many cassettes I’ve put my hand up for lately this, I thought, was the one that could really have been a corker. Turns out I was right and really shouldn’t have been such a slack fuck because Strike A Match rock. The eponymous opener suggests ragged, melodic hardcore a la countryfolk So Much Hate and Danger!Man and while those sounds still linger here and there things aren’t quite as straightforward as you might at first think. Spaces open up and discords tear through them while tempos change and the singer throws all sorts of shrieky shitfits as elements of Heroin, Hoover, Torches To Rome and even some breathy Fugazi influences all creep up through the cracks to make this a rather spiffy little statement of intent. The tape is/was limited to 50 copies so I don’t know whether there are any left hanging about, but it’s available for download and I think a CD version might be on the way. Go seek!