Ten reviews you might have missed

Reviews from Monday 02 August 2021

LAKES – ‘Start Again’

Almost two years to the day from delivering their debut LP, ‘Constance’, Hertfordshire six-piece Lakes are returning with ‘Start Again’. Having firmly established a mix of mid-western emo, math rock, and alternative indie on their first outing, this second full-length sees them expand on their foundations. Having started

Friday 30 July 2021

Young Culture – ‘Godspeed’

Even in the context of the longest year in history, it feels like barely five minutes have passed since we first heard the debut album from Young Culture – in fact, it’s been nearly ten months, though in release terms that’s still a pretty swift turnaround for follow up

Wednesday 28 July 2021

Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! – ‘Gone Are The Good Days’

After a five-year blitz which brought three studio albums, Paris-based post-hardcore band Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! have taken their time with album number four. ‘Gone Are The Good Days’ has been a long, drawn-out process that has had all the members toying with what they wanted to create. Pumping out

Tuesday 27 July 2021

Creeper – ‘American Noir’

Robbed of exorcising the demons of the exhausting creative process that yielded critically-acclaimed album ‘Sex, Death and the Infinite Void’ in a celebratory live setting, Creeper do what only Creeper can do – launch an incredibly bold and daring EP. Billed by lead singer William Gould as the “epilogue”

Friday 23 July 2021

Descendents – ‘9th & Walnut’

If you were to create a Mount Rushmore of 80s hardcore punk legends – beings who changed the shape of the genre and influenced the following generations – you’d likely include Henry Rollins, Keith Morris, Brett Gurewitz and Bill Stevenson (if you don’t know any of those names, immediately

Monday 19 July 2021

Alexis Marshall – ‘House of Lull. House of When’

“You make a record with a box of 10 or 12 crayons, and then you get the one with 80 crayons and you think you’ve moved ahead, but you’re still just making a record with paper and crayons. I want the broken crayons. I wanna melt ‘em together. I

Friday 16 July 2021

Times Of Grace – ‘Songs Of Loss And Separation’

If you’re a fan of modern metal, you’ve likely heard of Killswitch Engage and are completely aware of their masterful take on metalcore, pioneering the genre and leading the way for a lot of today’s scene. What you may not have heard of is Times Of Grace, a

Wednesday 14 July 2021

Yonaka – ‘Seize The Power’

Brighton four-piece Yonaka haven’t really stopped since releasing debut album ‘Don’t Wait ‘Til Tomorrow’ back in 2019. Throughout the enforced break to touring, they’ve been busy writing a lot of new material and played both the May and December stay-at-home Five4FiveFest days in support of the Music Venue Trust’s

LIVE: Holding Absence @ Portland House, Cardiff

It starts with a crackle. The kind you hear when you first gently place the needle down on a record, waiting for the music to kick in. Shots of Cardiff’s Portland House come into view, and already the scene is perfectly set for what has always felt

Monday 12 July 2021

Lower Automation – ‘Lower Automation’

Let’s start by talking about the delightful board game ‘Mouse Trap’. If you’ve never played, the game hinges on a super-complicated machine, the aforementioned mouse trap; you turn a crank, which knocks a ball, that sends a diver into a tub, and finally a little cage lowers onto the

Sunday 11 July 2021

The Maine – ‘XOXO: From Love & Anxiety in Real Time’

The Maine have been tapping into our deepest, darkest, and most vulnerable thoughts since we were teenagers. Fans have grown with them from their purest pop punk days when the band themselves were still kids, to the wholesome and caring men that they are today, and all

Thursday 08 July 2021

Brookehorse – ‘My Downfall Is My Own Design’

Birmingham: a creative hub for alternative talent that spans decade upon decade. From the godfathers of heavy metal, Black Sabbath, to tech-wizards Oceans Ate Alaska, the second city has been consistently churning out top-tier music for decades, and if post-hardcore newcomers Brookehorse are anything to go by, it’s

Justin Courtney Pierre – ‘The Price Of Salt’

It’s been a heartbeat since Motion City Soundtrack front man Justin Courtney Pierre treated us to the consistent and digestible EP that was ‘An Anthropologist On Mars’. Now, just four months later, he’s back with ‘The Price Of Salt’. The EPs announcement was complemented by an essay

Wednesday 07 July 2021

LIVE: Download Festival Pilot 2021 – Sunday

It’s been a long, long time since Punktastic have been able to cover live music as we’ve always known it, and to be able to dive back in at the one and only Download Festival is more than we could ever have hoped for. The crowd was smaller, as

Thursday 01 July 2021

LIVE: Download Festival Pilot 2021 – Saturday

Born Of Osiris – ‘Angel Or Alien’

Progressive metalcore pioneers Born Of Osiris have been rewriting their story and carving out their own path for well over a decade. Alongside bands like Veil Of Maya, Winds Of Plague and After The Burial, they helped the sub-genre rise to prominence and have continued to pave the

Wednesday 30 June 2021

LIVE: Download Festival Pilot 2021 – Friday

Saturday 26 June 2021

Pom Pom Squad – ‘Death Of A Cheerleader’

Here’s a quick concept – The McGurk effect is a perceptual phenomenon that creates an illusion where one sound is paired with the visual component of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound (thanks Wikipedia). It would be like seeing a dog meow but hearing a

Friday 25 June 2021

Free Throw – ‘Piecing It Together’

Having the usual album release-tour cycle put on hold, Free Throw have used their time to write for themselves rather than worrying about their position in the never-ending music rat race. ‘Piecing It Together’ is certainly an apt title for the Nashville quintet’s fourth album. In the past, Cory Castro

Thursday 24 June 2021

Amenra – ‘De Doorn’

How do you begin to review a band like Amenra? To talk about them in the usual terms of instrumentation and production, lyrics and arrangements; it just feels reductive, like trying to write a haiku about the Old Testament. The true Amenra experience is equal parts religious ritual and