If you have ears of steel and thick neck muscles, this trio from Grimsby
may just be the bastard sons of Motorhead via Probot you’ve been
waiting for. Taking classic songwriting back to the drawing board,
breaking said drawing board against the wall, possibly even swallowing
and regurgitating bits of the same drawing board and then shoving
bits of it up the arses of the indie-pop scenesters that are still
dominating new music today, Sewer Rats certainly make tracks that
would cause a proud tear to trickle down the side of Lemmy’s
weathered face, the side with the mole obviously.
Calling themselves ‘hard psych grunge’, needless to say,
there’s a lot of heavy guitar-based noise in their debut EP.
Though it’s generally formulaic in content, and its tracks are
perhaps twice as long as they should be, Luke Morris’ growly
vocals summon just enough disdain to be attention-worthy, the other
two bringing a rhythmic energy, punctuated with a guitar-based psychedelic
interlude in ‘Black Label Serotonin’, before launching back
into the tinged metal that is most definitely their signature sound.
Signed to Whitechapel’s Fluffer Records, though
‘the Rats’ don’t show a lot of diversity here, their
strength is in their combination of modern-life desolation and clear
anger of what it might actually feel like to be a rodent living in
someone’s shit. But, all joking aside, mind where you’re
putting those signs of the devil in the mosh pit.
