The tidal wave of noisy duos continues unabated as Ghost of the Avalanche crash in with this five-tracker. Comprising bass, drums and vocals, they don’t sound like a duo, and despite the instrumentation, they don’t sound like Royal Blood, either (the only real similarity is that they sound loud, and the bass sounds like bass and two guitars).
‘Volcano’ erupts in a wall of driving guitars and thrashing drums and brings with it a gritty old-school vibe. The pace is fast and frantic, with the overloading ‘Hold Your Fire’ combining underground hardcore aggression with a shouty boot-boy chorus. The fiery ‘Guns’ is all of 41 seconds long, and closer ‘Two Tribes’ (not a cover) is a bass-driven riot.
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While the dense racket is big on attack, it’s infused with a poppy accessibility. That said, you certainly couldn’t accuse them of going all out for the mass market: they called in producer Ben Findlay (Robert Plant, Peter Gabriel, Goldfrapp etc) with a view to capturing the raw intensity of that live performance on record. It’s not overproduced, that’s for sure, and if the rawness proves to be an obstacle to radio play, then that’s radio’s loss. Punk as.
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