The album’s cover features the four band members, blurred and dyed red; the colour of anger, love and danger. It’s a deeply fitting choice for music that feels passionate and devilish. Each of the ten songs feels like an idea expressed thoughtfully but with an air of recklessness. Compared to their previous album, 2020’s understated ‘Nothing As The Ideal’, it’s far more upbeat and creative and, because it’s almost uninterested in compromise, the tone and energy shift wildly throughout its runtime. This isn’t a bad thing as it all operates within certain parameters and styles that make the whole thing work remarkably well, despite its scope.

As their band’s name implies, the sound is a bubbling brew of folk rock, sludge and doom, with a healthy dose of blues. Each song contains a different mix of these elements and each sits somewhere between Monolord, Cave-In and the White Stripes. It’s an unusual but effective mix.

The whole record is built upon shifts in style and tone that feel both atmospheric and surprisingly effective. At their heaviest, the crushingly eerie ‘Red Rocking Chair’ uses slow, quaking riffs and spoken word to give it authority, while ‘Angel on the Wayside’ is a bluesy number with so much energy it bounds around like a puppy. At the other end of the scale, ‘Starting Line’ feels almost like a folk song until its emotional strings tighten, pulling it in a different direction entirely.

The album’s strongest feature is the way the band balance the different musical styles and the energy between them. ‘The Welterweight’ and ‘Saturn Song’ use fast, muted guitars to give them a sense of urgency and momentum but it’s a sound that sits slightly at odds with the way the songs unfold, giving them a mischievous air. Similarly, ‘Turn On The Light’ marches along on a comfortable, shrugging guitar part, right until its dynamic changes like a twisting knife.

Although the record’s greatest strength is the interplay between band members, the production work by Eddie Spear at Blackbird Studio in Nashville allows the different elements to slot together like a puzzle. It’s notable how much creative energy drummer Christian Powers brings to the album too, and the heavy booming sound gives them a strong presence, particularly on ‘Turn On The Light’. The rides (and the metallic Ting sounds) under ‘Hold Up, Say What?’ also give it a strong character. However, the record’s sound is best defined by the tangible bass and guitars, sounding grubby and lived-in as they express their ideas. Notably, ‘Culling Line’ leans back on a heavy sludge riff that allows the guitar to sing over the top and its biting, emotional tone. It’s a beautiful piece of work.

One of the album’s most compelling elements is its sequencing. Like on their previous record, the various shifts in style lend an unusual energy. After moving slowly in one direction, it shifts, giving it a strange and unpredictable quality. Track four ‘Hold Up, Say What?’ is such a straight-up noisy rock song that it arrives like a shock and feels strangely out of place despite giving the album a huge jolt of energy. Similarly, the lively ‘Angel On The Wayside’ feels as if it’s stepping in a different direction to the proceeding songs, like a kind of musical square dance. That said, the variety of styles makes it difficult to decide if there is a more effective track order. Either way, the slightly bumpy ride is part of the charm.

The album’s title tells you a lot about its themes. The idea of the self being reflective, of recursive ideas and repeated patterns. The most straightforward use of this idea is the droning blues riffs under ‘Aethernet’ or the repeating patterns of ‘Angel On The Wayside’. Both songs treat this as a basis and then break free of the patterns. It’s a striking form of expression, especially as they are using sounds honed over years of commitment.

All Them Witches are reborn on their new record. As the title suggests, ‘House Of Mirrors’ is a familiar space crammed with new ways of seeing themselves. It’s a brilliant, beguiling piece of work.

IAN KENWORTHY

Pressure? Pressure is for tyres! ‘CO.WAR.DICE.’ doesn’t buckle under it. It doesn’t even acknowledge it. It just gets on with being an excellent record. What’s immediately striking is how little the band seem interested in playing it safe. A lesser comeback would have chased the energy of ‘Move, Shake, Hide’ and called it a day. Instead, Marmozets have arrived as a leaner, stranger version of themselves. Four people rather than five, drawing from a weirder, wider pool of influence. There’s DNA here from post-punk’s jagged early days, from the jerky, irreverent spirit of Devo, to the swaggering weirdness of The Cramps. There are several moments on this record where Becca MacIntyre’s vocal has a dreamy, almost Siouxsie-esque quality. Their sound has evolved, but not so much that it’s not quintessentially Marmozets. 

A voice so distinctive and instantly recognisable is like being born with a third nipple. You either have it, or you don’t, and MacIntyre has it. Opener ‘A Kiss From A Mother’ wastes absolutely no time making that case. It’s tight, urgent, and sets the tone for an album that refuses to let you drift through its 11 tracks. ‘Cut Back’ is a force of nature. Relentless and immediate, it’s the kind of song that burns itself into your brain on that first listen and doesn’t look like it’s going to leave any time soon. ‘New York’ crackles with excited, spontaneous energy, capturing the feeling of a band rediscovering the joy of simply playing together in a room. It’s loose and alive in ways that expensive production often inadvertently kills.

‘You Want The Truth’ is perhaps the album’s most direct moment – the title alone tells you what you’re getting, and Becca delivers it with a confrontational clarity that feels both thrilling and galvanising. ‘Swear I’m Alive’ and ‘Running With The Sun In Your Eyes’ keep the momentum rolling in the album’s midsection, the latter swinging with a groove reminiscent of the early 2000s that sits in completely unexpected but brilliant territory. Even the more restrained moments pull their weight; ‘Mes Désirs’ adds texture and breathing space, while ‘Like Last Night’ has an almost nostalgic warmth to it that catches you off guard.

The album earns its ambitions in its quietest moments too. ‘Dandy’ strips everything back to something fragile and exposed, demonstrating a confidence that now extends beyond volume. Closer ‘Keep Going Darling’ is a slow-burn builder that takes its time before arriving somewhere moving – loops layering and shifting beneath MacIntyre’s vocal until the whole thing feels like it’s about to lift off. It’s a perfect closer in that it recontextualises everything before it.

Thematically, the record is unafraid to look outward. War, cowardice, the paralysis of watching a fractured world and wondering what one band from Yorkshire can actually do about any of it. The title itself, ‘CO.WAR.DICE.’, ties all of that into one anxious, playful knot. But the album never tips into despair. Its conclusion, and its whole emotional architecture, is stubbornly hopeful. That’s harder to pull off than fury, yet Marmozets do it with ease. It was a long wait but this comeback has more than made up for it.

KATHRYN EDWARDS

Three things define the music on ‘Salvo’; alt rock, a flair for the dramatic and a love for the gothic, so you can’t help but compare it to My Chemical Romance. Notably, the opening song ‘Little Promises’ switches between verse and chorus in a way that shares the same vibe as My Chemical Romance’s biggest hits. Meanwhile, the opening moments of ‘The Murder Capital‘ could almost be an extract from ‘Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge’. This isn’t simple copying though. There’s more to the sound. It’s ambitious and very much trying to be its own thing.

After setting the tone on two fairly distinctive rock songs, they deploy ‘Unholy’ as the central showpiece. With a big opening riff, a nod to 80’s hard-rock histrionics and a theatrical outro, it’s the band saying this is what we can do. It’s the highlight, make no mistake. That’s in part because, while the energetic ‘Incantation’ and the punchy ‘Little Promises’ are also strong songs too, the EP overall plays it safe. Given the type of music, the type of band and the EP’s title, you’d expect The Howling to try and blow your socks off, but it’s not like that. It’s cautious. There’s no short, snappy single or anything truly gonzo to catch your attention.

Luckily, however, the vocals are quite distinctive with a delicious and slightly creepy tone, especially when they’re leaning into a more emotional register. This is notable on ‘Incantation’, which is the definition of an earworm as you can feel the phrase ‘join me’ slowly burying into your brain and lodging itself there. Despite working well, it might not hook you the first time and this is true of the EP as a whole. The reason for this is the band’s other big influence, The Smashing Pumpkins, as well as the way they lean toward an alt-rock sense of richness and scope rather than punky accessibility. This extends to the production choices, meaning the sound is thick and layered with quite sharp edges. It’s an interesting and unusual choice that makes the EP feel like a distinct piece of work. However, it does cause problems on ‘The Murder Capital’, where the song winds down after less than two minutes and its aggressive outro solo gets lost somewhere in the watery layering. Similarly, the closing ballad ‘New Religion’ builds from a simple vocal into a style that’s fitting but not exactly gripping, meaning the EP’s closing act holds together like a damp tissue.

The Howling have style but ‘Salvo’ proves they have substance. It’s a solid if uneven debut from a promising new band.

IAN KENWORTHY

Let’s change tack a moment. Let’s talk about WREX. Their history is a little complicated, but basically they’re a punk rock duo. Singer Mae Seaton and vocalist/guitarist George Donoghue released their first proper EP ‘This Hell Goes A Long Way Down’ in 2024. Since then they’ve been establishing themselves as an uncompromising live band ready for their second act. Their core sound is punk rock mixed with metal riffs and loops. The two vocalists trade parts. You could compare them to The Subways but the closest comparison is probably Hot Milk but with a 90’s aesthetic, and it’s that which defines them; the choice of melodies, the dirty sound, drum loops that feel so analogue. It’s lo-fi and honest. Embracing those rough edges gives their music texture at odds to many modern records. It’s neither smoothed or blended, and is pleasantly gritty.

WREX are unafraid to use their voices in interesting ways. Alongside singing there is spoken word on ‘111’, rapped verses on ‘Paranoia’ and slightly weird melodies on ‘Consume’. In fact, the EP’s most striking feature is the way the two vocalists work around each other – not with each other. Rather than taking turns, it’s like a rowdy crowd trying to squeeze past each other to be heard. It gives the songs crackly energy and an air of unpredictably.

The EP’s artwork, a black, stark square with the name imposed in white is a huge contrast to that of their debut. It’s darker, austere and very clear about its contents. Each song echoes this. Each is actively trying something different. ‘Paranoia’ is laced with riffs and harmonic guitar squeals. ‘Consume’ is based on swaggering nu-metal and a strange mid-section. ‘111’ makes a big deal of lasting one minute and eleven seconds and uses this time to build momentum. However, it’s not a traditional “short song” and its end is abrupt and unnatural. Similarly, the excellent piano ballad ‘A Thousand Ways’ surrenders itself to a drum loop and then, just stops. It’s intentionally jarring, and creates the same effect. Combined with the strong mental health theme and the fourth track literally being called ‘The Noose’, it becomes a clear, intentional statement. However, it also means 40% of the songs are cut short. It’s an artistic compromise that draws attention from the frankly excellent songwriting elsewhere.

As we said at the beginning, mental health problems can be a mixture of conflicting emotions, discordant voices, the downbeat and uplifting struggling with each other. They can be a mix of explosive energy and abrupt endings. WREX have distilled this into their new EP. ‘SADWORLD’ is a stunning piece of art but only a taste of what they’re capable of.

IAN KENWORTHY

After sporadically touring as a ‘hobby’, that wait is over. They have finally followed it up with ‘Prang’. After such a long time, it’s hard to know what to expect. Listen back to those big singles, and they show the band at their most straightforward. Most of their discography is weirder. Some consider them a pop punk band, but their music has little in common with Green Day or Blink-182. It’s a distinctive sound that leans more toward rock, but their songs don’t follow a template. Each feels different yet is clearly the work of the same band. ‘Prang’ shares these features, in effect it sounds exactly like a record made by A after a 20-odd year break, which is both its strength and weakness.

Broadly, the difference between this record and those from their heyday is it is being released by Cooking Vinyl and not a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. There is no pressure to write a huge chart-topping banger, so they haven’t. Instead, the songs lean in different, more interesting directions. It means the album is stranger than you might expect, taking longer to settle into, but it’s also comfortably the band’s most consistent record. In essence, it’s confident, unfiltered and delightfully weird.

Way back in the ‘Hi-fi Serious’ days, the band’s guitarist Marc Chapman appeared in Total Guitar Magazine. The article discussed his left-handed playing style and love for guitar solos. Here you can hear those skills being put to good use. While there is plenty of showing off, like the louche guitar solo on ‘Shit Summer’ or the wicked fretwork on ‘Kings Of Lowestoft’, mostly he’s writing interesting, thoughtful parts. Notably there’s a great interpretation of the classic ‘I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll’ on ‘All In’ which deploys the lick like an offensive weapon. Similarly, the hard sound that opens ‘Hello Sunshine’ has teeth but it chews rather than bites. The whole record is like this, in effect, tasteful.

That said the sound is surprisingly punk, featuring a rough, anything-goes edge that a lot of pop punk doesn’t. It’s most obvious on the delightfully rowdy ‘Techno Viking’ but even the more rocky ‘Back To The Shop’ feels nicely dangerous. Similarly ‘Walkover’ has a fast sway, driven by the snapping drumbeat.

The most notable thing, and perhaps shines a light on what it is that makes A so distinctive, is that the songs refuse to stay in one shape. This is a double edged sword. The band’s biggest hits are relatively straightforward and delight in repetition. Here they avoid that. Giles Perry’s keyboards are quite often used to give the songs a strange vibe or transition the song to a different space. In the case of ‘Bring On The Likes‘ it’s an awe-inspiring shift.

Jason Perry remains an ideal frontman. He’s armed with a distinctive voice that sounds unique, no matter how he expresses himself, along with a wicked sense of humour, a distaste for simple song structures and a restless creative energy. Throughout the record he favours a slacker vocal that is a mixture of singing, spoken word and melody. It’s tamed by age, but also bubbling with enthusiasm there is a cheekiness and a defined sense of humour. After the band’s initial run he worked as a professional songwriter, producing Grammy winning records, which might explain why this record sound so good. It’s biting and bassy but with a pleasing depth so that through decent headphones you can feel its rich tone.

Where once Jason Perry mocked old people as “losers” for not being able to use computers, here he’s cast as an old person himself struggling with the online world. It’s a canny choice and tells you a lot about his state of mind, although not quite as much as the discussion of mental health and struggling with cancer on the aptly named ‘Shit Summer’.

‘Bring On The Likes’ feels very much like a companion piece to their 1999 single ‘Old Folks’. It’s a stunning, spoken word, almost stream of conscious song. Indeed, Perry uses this approach on numerous tracks, it’s curious approach and defines the record’s entire feel. Often, he makes strange choices work counter to you’d expect, given the music. Take songs like ‘Back To The Shop’ which have a real “why would you use that as a chorus” vibe. It’s a common theme, a mismatch between what Jason Perry is doing and what you might expect. This is unusual and ultimately robs the album of a couple of straight-up classics, and yet, it gives the songs a strong character. This simply couldn’t be another record by another band.

‘Comment Leaver’ is sung from the perspective of a Daily Mail reader and is a barbed disassembly of that type of person. It also requires him to sing “I’m a little racist” which is a choice. Indeed this is a record full of interesting creative decisions, strong song writing and a talent that has aged like a fine wine.

‘Prang’ lacks a big, simple single to really grab you by both ears but it’s easily A’s most consistent album. It’s a record about finding humour in the passage of time, about having fun and keeping the spark alive. It’s about joy, it’s about love and if we ain’t got that then we ain’t got much and we ain’t got nothing, nothing.

IAN KENWORTHY

Dani Nigro and Keaton Whittaker are two creatives. They’re not tethered to a band structure. That means changing their sound is easier. Indeed, their press releases talk breathlessly of the producers they have worked with. This isn’t unusual, but you can’t really predict the results. Thankfully, the EP turns out to be a complete flex, designed to show off exactly what they can do.

Daisy Grenade’s sound is best described as teenage punk rock, like We Are The In Crowd, Yours Truly or Avril Lavigne’s mischievous era. The duo fill that same youthful alt-pop niche but this EP is the sound of them growing up. It can be divided into three acts which track that evolution; ACT I feels young and boisterous. ACT III feels older and more mature. Sandwiched between them, of course, is ACT II – an enormous nervous breakdown.

The first two songs making up ACT I are a mix of the same scrappy punk rock attitude and hook-filled choruses that defined their 2024 EP ‘Cult Classic’. Opener  ‘A Beautiful Woman Is A Weapon, I Guess That’s Why They Call Her A Bombshell’ is built around a huge push and pull vocal, designed to catch you by both ears. It’s a rowdy and exciting slice of pop-punk that feels totally unchained. On ‘Emily’, this sound is pared back in favour of a sly piece of verbal assassination aimed at the titular character.

‘Girls Are So Lucky’ sits at the record’s centre. Produced and co-written by Grammy Award-winning producer Pom Pom, it’s completely different to all the other songs here and actively feels like a single. It features a repeating hook and a processed vocal at odds with the duo’s singing styles, similar to last year’s single ‘Don’t Sweat It’. Beginning with a looped, detuned guitar riff it, uses the phrase ‘so lucky’ as a soft hook only to collapse into a dubstep-style breakdown. It’s miles from the other songs, and yet it oozes the quality you’d expect from a Grammy Award-winning co-writer.

During ACT III they reach a more mature alt-rock sound, but with that same pleasingly barbed lyrical tone. The simple guitar part underpinning ‘Rent To Own’ is bathed in chorus, making it soft and quite lovely, and then expands into something bigger and bolder for its finale. Similarly, ‘It Must Be Me’ soars back for an epic, closing chorus, but sadly the singer’s voice isn’t powerful enough for it to work as intended, creating this frankly bizarre denouement where the vocal sits at odds with the music. It’s a slightly odd ending, but again shows that maturity.

Daisy Grenade truly have ‘So Much To Say’ on their new EP. It neatly mirrors growing up; boisterous, keen to experiment and a little bit messy.

IAN KENWORTHY

Dead Pony are a rock band whose music mixes swaying, swaggery riffs with repeating vocal patterns, but not just that. There’s a thrilling sense of adventure to their music. You’re never quite sure what to expect.

‘What If?’ begins with a repeating piano part, like an evil version of Madonna’s ‘Frozen’. It threatens to head towards pop music territory before descending into buzzing, technical riffing and distorted screams. In doing so, it raises a middle finger to expectations while setting the stage for what comes next. Essentially, each song features a brilliant setup before plunging headfirst into new ideas. It can be heard as the boisterous ‘BOOM!’ shifts gears or in the nest of electronic spiders that replaces a guitar solo on ‘Eat My Dust!’. It’s all slick and never feels unwarranted. Imagine a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat; you know what’s coming but can’t help but be impressed by the flourish.

As the name suggests, ‘Freak Like Me’ is a delightfully weird song that uses soundscapes and an interesting sonic palette alongside chainsaw-like guitars that push Dead Pony into the same sonic spaces as Nine Inch Nails.

The EP is again produced by guitarist Blair Crichton. This is the key. While affording one person such creative control can be risky, here, his wild ideas are expressed with confidence. He also captures an indefinable sense of glee. It’s hard to listen to ‘Freak Like Me‘ or ‘BOOM!‘ without imagining Crichton in the control room, grinning like a torturer as the music contorts into some striking shapes. Even the relatively straightforward ‘Fury’ has every drop of excitement squeezed from it.

Returning to the piano sound that opens the EP, the final song ‘Lost Inside Of Me’ slowly reveals itself to be something of a masterpiece. Drifting on an easy chorus, it uses the phrase ‘Inside me’ as a soft hook. Then, it folds in on itself, internalising that message, resulting in a massive guitar-based nervous breakdown. It’s a superb expression of idea and a great song.

This is Dead Pony with all the dials set to eleven. Their new EP sees them evolving into one of the most exciting rock bands on the scene. It’s the sound of them accelerating away from their peers. ‘Eat My Dust!’ indeed.

IAN KENWORTHY

]]> https://www.punktastic.com/album-reviews/the-flatliners-cold-world/ Thu, 07 May 2026 11:00:06 +0000 https://www.punktastic.com/?post_type=album-reviews&p=240349 Sometimes you just need a break, a rock to clamber onto in the middle of a raging river, and that’s exactly what The Flatliners have provided in the form of ‘Cold World’. By their standards, the Canadians’ seventh outing is a very calm record, but it’s what we’re craving from a band who’ve ridden the tides of punk for two decades without a lineup change or compromising their values. They’ve moved on from processing the generational trauma which dominated 2022’s ‘New Ruin’ and emerged from the other side with a zen detachment from the turmoil of 2026, and what we’ve got is an album that feels like your first cold shower after you get back from a festival. 

That’s not to say that The Flatliners have gone soft at all. Lead single ‘Good, You?’ takes a side-swipe at enforced male stoicism and the “ever-open wound” of never being able to reveal your vulnerability, but with a dream-like, uplifting roar that dares you to have the courage to open up. The ironically titled ‘Inner Peace’ tightly winds through chiming guitar and lyrical claustrophobia, and the harsh harmonies of ‘Pulpit’ spark rough riffs and chanted challenges to the status quo.

While they might be happy with the position they’ve adopted as being beyond the storm and stress of the world, The Flatliners have not completely detached themselves. Rather, this whole album blooms with “nowstalgia,” the joy of living each moment with the joy that we reserve for some imagined glorious past. Even a powerful shredder like ‘Burn’ that maximises the amount of guitar that The Flatliners can pour into a track feels like a pause for a deep, mindful, albeit it rage-filled breath before making your next move. It’s a compelling experience to listen to an album from a band who know exactly who they are and who they want to be. 

‘Frozen World’ is an album that takes you on a trip around a single bubble in time. From the ferocious call to arms that sparks ‘Stolen Valour’ all the way to closer ‘United In Spite’, a tribute to sticking with your in-group of haters through it all, we’re being dragged on a guided tour through the moment in which The Flatliners are currently living. The sense of being involved and sucked into their vision is so strong on ‘Whyte Light’, a song whose occasional quiet guitar drops only make the massive chorus that more prominent. We’re still in that mental and sonic space of waiting for the bombs to drop as they sweep us forward to ‘Into Annihilation’, but there’s never a menace or worry. The Flatliners are here with us to hold our tattooed hands through all the chaos we observe around us.

We love to discuss a band’s growth over time and track their progress on some imaginary musical chart, but to hear a band taking an album of pause for themselves is supremely refreshing. The Flatliners are living in the now and we love that for them. If you turn up ‘And They’re Off’ and close your eyes, you’re practically on an inflatable drifting on the ocean (while, admittedly, a war rages on the beach), and that’s an incredibly admirable quality. They’re not reactionary or screaming about the wrongs and the rights of society, they’re taking a step back and inviting us to do the same. ‘Cold World’ is a welcome and scenic plateau in their sound for us to experience at our leisure, and a delight to absorb yourself into from start to finish.

KATE ALLVEY

Title track and lead single ‘WIRED’ presents all the elements of the album’s writing and production that make it work. A jungle-esque beat drives the verses, steely, overdriven bass and cleaner guitars layering on top of each other, before the chorus kicks in, drops down, builds up and releases tension with the regularity of breath. The only moments where the instrumentation drops down are filled with distorted feedback, keeping the tension high. All of this happening alongside Andrew Fisher’s emotive and at times soaring vocals.

The urgency of the album’s opening two tracks – ‘Time Waster’ and ‘WIRED’ bubbles to the surface throughout. ‘Pick Up The Pieces’ starts with Fisher’s distorted vocals and alternates between a bouncing drum-and-bass led verse and a roaring chorus. ‘Sever’ is a stabbing number, with a more open chorus contrasting its unrelenting verses, eventually fully opening in the song’s final moments, before Fisher’s vocals crash into white noise.

When the energy is dropped, it’s for a quieter, moodier, atmosphere. There is a consistent tonal through-line which carries the album between its faster and slower paced moments – ‘Broken By Design’ and ‘Head Alight’ are certainly quieter than ‘WIRED’, but they all feel part of the same family. A large part of this is production choices, leaning into a dirtier bass and slightly subdued vocals across the album, but the songs themselves avoid sounding sluggish, instead settling into their own grooves.

Those tamer, slowcore grooves run through the album – in the case of ‘Deadweight’, literally slowing the song down for its choruses – which keeps ‘WIRED’ humming with a dancing rhythm regardless of tempo. Hooks rise and fall, vocals alternate between clean and distorted, creating an elevated sonic space which is as comfortable with harshness as it is with Basement’s catchier side. Songs like ‘The Way I Feel’ hold these two juxtaposed elements in accord with each other, allowing the vocals in the chorus to become distorted to the point of being illegible – what is left is the tune and the groove, and both wash over you with the waves of fuzz and gain.

‘WIRED’ comes to a close with ‘Summer’s End’, a distinctly nineties song. The bass is still steely, but with a touch of chorus to give it a Cure vibe, which complements the upbeat drums. Fisher floats above and below the music, his vocals swimming with a fuzzed-out lead guitar soloing its way through the second half the song. It’s a summery song, dripping with a nostalgic poppy energy, and a simple and infectious rise and fall vocal line which becomes inescapable by the song’s end.

As rebirths go, ‘WIRED’ is a worthy one. Easily more adventurous than ‘Beside Me’, with a dedication to pushing both songwriting and sonic textures, this is Basement finding what worked for them in the past and holding on to its core while jettisoning anything that would push them into self-pastiche. A band returning from a break must be able to answer the question of whether it was worth it. Basement have answered with a resounding yes.

WILL BRIGHT

‘No Place Of Warmth’’s epic opening title track is ominous. Its ’80s horror movie synths give way to a gigantic riff, bolstered by the band’s pummelling rhythm section of drummer Matt Dennard and bassist Samantha Mobley. Notable too is the surprising guest feature of My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, who lends some eerie shriek-filled vocals to the title track’s final minutes. A subtle addition to the track, Way offers an even greater malevolent edge as he seethes “This is not your place of warmth, you will find no peace” over the track’s brutal chugging. Here, and indeed throughout the entire album, the drums and vocals are pushed to the fore, making for a direct, dry and punchy style of death metal. Meanwhile, sparing but effective melodic flushes from guitarists Michael Munday and Chris Bonner lend a somewhat melodic feel to proceedings, as their impressive leads on ‘Eyes Of Despair’ and ‘Ethereal Dreams’ demonstrate. 

What’s apparent as the album progresses is just how huge the band sound. On the earsplitting ‘Invoke War’, the thunderous stomp of ‘Frost Forged’ and towering riffage of ‘DEATHWEAVER’, they sound positively colossal – this is death metal in all its widescreen glory, invoking the fantasy-filled, evil-tinged imagery of the band’s album covers. The bass-heavy chugging filth of ‘Dreadnought’ features the guttural tones of Sanguisugabogg’s Devin Swank. They plunge the band to ever darker depths, whilst the Carcass recalling, catchy-as-hell and gloriously titled ‘Killin’ Time (Until It’s Time To Kill)’ closes the album in neck-breaking style. The result is an album bookended by its two most immediately hook-laden tracks. 

It’s hard to avoid words like “frostbitten”,“ice-cold” and “glacial” when talking about Frozen Soul’s sound, but the band’s no-frills, stripped down and savage approach to death metal lends itself well to these descriptors. The riffs are razor sharp, the low-end is aggressively punchy and you can practically see the steam emitting from Green’s mouth as his monstrous roars echo over the barren and vast, sub-zero landscapes the band so effectively evoke. Despite being only three albums into their career, Frozen Soul are beginning to sound like genre veterans themselves, such is the strength of the band’s songwriting, self-assured identity and singular vision. With a focus on making killer, riff-filled, savage headbangers propelled by the instantly recognisable gargantuan roar of frontman Green, ‘No Place Of Warmth’ is the band’s most affecting, cohesive and monstrous release to date.

ADAM FIRTH