With so much of modern hardcore becoming a tedious nostalgia pit – endless reunions; fests where you have to squint til your eyes bleed in order to see a modern name on the line-up; reissues that’re somehow more expensive than second-hand originals – it’s almost refreshing to hear a new band hacking away at a time-honoured sound.
Hailing from somewhere in the south east of England, Render play 90s-style emo. This means typewriter fonts (even down to the address label of the box this was sent to me in…), manilla aesthetics and grainy images of worn out devices that have long since fallen into obsolescence.
Musically things are similarly on-point, with the band mixing up crunchy riffs, twinkling arpeggios and vocals that range from spoken to howled to screeched. To me, their sound most recalls the likes of Current, Mainspring and Embassy, though there’s also a sizeable nod to UK types like Bob Tilton (pre-Leading Hotels Of The World) and Manrae – both in terms of the instrumentation and the fact that the mumbly, poetic invocations are delivered in an unapologetically local dialect.
‘You Are An Angel’ features some unexpected chugging towards the end, and while I’m inclined to suggest it’s in the style of Unbroken or Undertow the fact that the song’s name seems to approximate an Indian Summer number means it could just as easily by inspired by Suiciety. The clear highlight, however, is closing track ‘Daffodils In Spring’. This one clocks in at almost ten minutes, and earns its sprawling runtime by dint of canny dynamics and the sheer passion of the vocal delivery.
All told, it’s a fine thing indeed – I look forward to reading about their first album in an upcoming issue of HeartattaCk.