Review Summary: A two piece who sound like the mob
The rot set in around 2000, individual identities were forever lost through the sublimation of the mainstream into a corporate conveyor belt of churned out pop pap that the morons lapped up. Constantly demanding more to a point where emo was threatening, Limp Bizcuit were youth corrupters and Snow Patrol were lauded by everyone from the ages 12-80.
The invigorating fire was doused and nothing but a backlog of records from the preceding eras prevented eternal derangement.
Fast forward 15 years and an ember flickers, hope returns and with it a two piece punk ensemble hailing from the most unlikely of places reinvigorate not so much the filth but certainly the fury.
Slaves are the embodiment of everything that has been missing when it comes to the UK rock scene, here are a two piece from Tunbridge Wells whose influences of Joy Division , Crass, Punk and the suffocation of good tunes to the style over substance ethics surrounding them led to the lads Isaac (lead vocals and drums) and Laurie (guitar and backing vocals) forming a band who let loose with a incongruous sneer that has long been missed.
This, their debut clocks in at just under 25 minutes and is an unrelenting master class in pummeling drums, jagged guitar playing and pint throwing raucousness.
Guitarist Laurie looks like your local mechanic but he may as well hit you in the face with a tyre iron due the damage caused by the riffs he effortlessly constructs on third song Wishing Well. All the songs are structured on the base of solid riffs, rock n roll drum beat and delivered in Isaacs’ Estuary English rallying cry vox.
On the song Black Rose , there’s a rolling ‘Black Rose’ refrain that any punk godfather would be proud of calling their own.
Lyrics and subject matter alternate between throwaway ‘Someone please get me off this white knuckle ride, before I choke to death swallowing my pride’ and venomous ‘I love you more when you’re angry with me cos you’re so boring when you’re nice’
Throughout the nine songs including the sixteen second Girl Fight there’s nothing particularly new on offer but the delivery, dueling vocal remonstrations and them riffs make the spark a fire and this two piece sound like a hundred strong mob that beat the masses back and do things on their own terms.
Come the album closer and highlight Beauty Quest two fingers will have been raised, struts will have been perfected and passions reignited.
