Hailing from punk rock hotbed, err, Brighton, TGOAT don’t let their hometown’s lack of gritty intensity hinder them. They’re angry young men, presumably about all the party conferences going on in their neck of the woods, but you can’t really make out the words anyway. They realise their simmering angst in a catchy fashion that marries bang-yer-head riffs with swathes of frenetic melody, mixed in with howling screams and Iggy Pop snarls. But mainly the screams.
This is proper rock music, with mouthy guitars and testosterone flying all over the place (women possessing testosterone too, feminist rock fans). And it’s pretty desperately required in a British music scene that has in recent times been so softened and greyed-out that any waster with a guitar is automatically described as ‘rock’. The clue’s in the name: if you do not rock, you probably are not rock.*
‘This is our religion’, TGOAT roar during the chorus. Based on the enthusiasm and fire on display here, you believe them. Can’t vouch for the rest of the lyric, due to the aforementioned RAAR-iness of their delivery. There may be something in there about not liking New Romantics, but it could just as easily have been ‘onomatopoeic’. The vocals do get clearer on the rest of the album, New Hopes, New Demonstrations, but this song’s sub-three minute detonation is to that album as Deftones’ explosive ‘Elite’ was to White Pony. It’s the short, sharp shock of the record, and if Top of the Pops was still going, the kind of thing you’d want incongruously featured on there, like you’d get the Almighty doing back in the day.
* Indeed, recently unearthed parchment suggests this last sentiment was Descartes’ planned sequel to cogito ergo sum.
throughsilver in blog 