Now I may not be the most dyed-in-the-wool punk out there, but I do enjoy a good old rattle of my small punk bones. I think the thing I look for most is that great punk or metal punk riotous assembly where the chaos and seeming off the cuff riffing and snotty gang vocals kick you hard in the nuts but you’re still singing along to the hookline as your bits fall off.
Graveyard Shifters debut bouncing and thrashing out of Finland is a fine, prime example of this thankfully. Short, sharp and suitably hard it gets straight up in your face, teeth bared and spittle flying with the title track; a tricky little number that changes tempo like an off centre power ball but that hook of ‘are you ready to lose control…?’ is simply glorious. Puts a grin on your broken teeth and chucks you headlong into the bluesy, almost sub-Motorhead riff of the charmingly titled ‘Tearvomitor’. Shouted vocals, mostly of “I don’t give a fuck… ” and a bright eyed gleeful but still angry attitude just makes it another winner. ‘Buy Low, Sell High ‘ puts the metal heavily in the punk with some great squealing guitar breaks as the drum ‘n’ bass drive the machine effortlessly forward.
Somewhere around here you realise these guys, despite sounding like they’re pinwheeling downhill out of control are actually a fine tight unit with a plethora of tempo changes and tricky little fills to call on (and even a piano on ‘Bender’) but absolutely without coming across as complicated at all. This is the sound of confidence, people, and it’s wonderfully successful.
There’s a lot of speed metal in here, yeah, a touch of the Speedtrap, but is that a bad thing? Nah, just another shade. You get the same sense of melody that Refused had (no higher praise), even a little of the melancholy that noise/screamo mavericks Drowningman had circa ‘Drowningman Still Loves You ‘, particularly on the excellent and for me album best ‘Beerserker’. Hell you also even get an almost death metal slow breakdown in the odd place too so lots of variety, but it’s all eventually pummelled into an energetic riff. Yeah, but mostly this is just rocking out hard nailed energy with some real catchy individual songwriting chops.
Ah, it’s just a great full length debut. It has perfect length songs around the two to three minutes mark, a total running time of about half an hour and frankly is a fantastic party starter. ‘Sometimes people don’t want to play with me… ‘ they sulk on ‘Love On The Rocks ‘. Gee, guys, don’t worry, I do!
(8/10 Gizmo)
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