“Cleaned my teeth, put on my best clobber. Tonight's the night I'm going to knob her/Vauxhall Viva's covered in rust but you can't fuck a bird on a 29 bus.” - The Macc Lads
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| Horns up |
New Horizons
Ritual Error – Dial in the Ghost
The London based post-hardcore outfit return with a remarkable record that envisages scenarios like Tony Blair being haunted by ghosts, nostalgia being poison and the modern band as a war unit. Musically, there are Minutemen and Fugazi references galore. Songs like ‘Life as a Contact Sport’ and ‘Return to Lagos’ are angry, abrasive and enthralling.
The album can be streamed and purchased here.
Buñuel – Mansuetude
Arriving not long after the implosion of Oxbow, the fourth album from Buñuel is what you expect from a band whose singer is Eugene Robinson. Elements of thrash and new wave are evident, especially in demented opener ‘Who Missed Me’. Drummer Franz Valente deserves praise for his tour de force performance that holds the chaos together and gives it a proper framework.
The album can be streamed and purchased here.
Pharmakon – Maggot Mass
Since 2013, Margaret Chardiet has been releasing records that use noise and industrial as a way of looking not just at herself but also at the decay within society. ‘Maggot Mass’ carries on in this vein and is utterly thrilling. Opener ‘Wither and Warp’ revels in its sturm und drang and ‘Splendid Isolation’ feels like a tribal war chant being conducted in a back alleyway.
The album can be streamed and purchased here.
Salisman Communal Orchestration - A Queen Among Clods
Ethereal psychedelic rock with trippy beats, this feels very much like a summer record. With a mix pushing all the instruments to the front, it’s an immediate record (with ‘The Blessed Swan & Me’ being a particular highlight) and the one/two punch of the title track and ‘Emerald-Aniline’ makes the listener soar into the sky.
The album can be streamed and purchased here.
Golden Oldies
🏴In memory of Geordie Walker 18/12/58 – 26/11/23🏴
After two years of legal issues, relentless touring and internal friction, it shouldn’t be a surprise that this LP remains, possibly, the most furious thing the band ever recorded. Although it saw them returning to their original sound, one or two new directions were evident in tracks like ‘Slipstream’.
Killing Joke – Absolute Dissent
The first album with the original lineup since 1982’s ‘Revelations’ was eagerly anticipated among the Gathering and it did not disappoint. An encapsulation of the many periods of the band, they upped their game for this and sounded utterly revitalised while paying tribute to fallen members (‘The Raven King’) and their roots (‘Ghosts of Ladbroke Grove’).
Killing Joke – Nightime
The perfect compromise between their newfound sound and old tricks, this 1985 record has an atmosphere that can never be recaptured by anyone. For pop fans, the album has KJ’s biggest hit single (‘Love Like Blood’) and their most influential (‘Eighties’) due to it (allegedly) being stolen by Nirvana.
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist.
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