Bang!…The Gluts are back…
..new album release on Fuzz Club
Bang!, very aptly titled, is a total attack on the senses, an immense sound, ragged and desperate. It explodes from the first moments of ‘Soy Beans’ with it’s searing, howling guitar effects and never lets up for 35 glorious, riotous minutes. It’s the Milan based bands 5th full length album and the 4th on Fuzz Club records, their natural home (for the sake of completion there is also a Fuzz Club Sessions release).
So what does it sound like? Punk rock. Psych punk. Hardcore psych. Post punk. All of those. Check out the swampy bass and scathing guitar of ‘Fight’ or the militant title track for a fiery jolt to the brain. It’s an exorcism, a purge, with rousing choruses and an ecstatic buzz, deranged but life affirming. But its not ‘just’ punk, its not ‘just’ anything; The Gluts don’t do average and they can create wide open expanses of space and crackling energy in 4 minutes of punk rock revolution, gleefully murdering song structure and changing tempo at will.
There are subtler touches though in the blizzard of sound – when they slow it down (a bit) it can sound like space imploding and reality cracking. ‘Vampire, A Walk At Midnight’ is The Gluts in giallo cinema mode, it starts at a menacing pace with a looping monstrous bass and lots of reverb but half way through they can’t help themselves and let it all go and the track verges on the edge of disintegration. ‘Marble Cats’ also has a gothic feel, glacial and throbbing to start with, beautifully seductive, before exploding into a barrage of noise; a mind melting psych burn out.
The album includes ‘Cade Gui?’ – the first song they’ve sung in Italian (video below) – a thumping street punk track and like all of this record destined to be a hectic live experience that I can’t wait to see!
They’ve always been visceral but now they’ve taken things up a few levels – drums more powerful and weighty, bass lower darker and dirtier, guitar and effects fuller fuzzier and more coruscating, guttural howled vocals full of venom and passion. Each track is a killer, an animal howl releasing pent up angst, so if you need to burn off some energy and expel your demons this will be the album for you.
Sometimes bands come along that make a sound that resonates deeply with you, that create a noise that feels like it’s been ripped from your own brain; for me there are a few of those around at the moment and The Gluts are right up there with the best. They serve up a mix of righteous fury and twisted surrealism that gets the heart beating faster and the hairs on the neck standing on end, leaving you purged and cleansed.
For the third time they are about to blow the roof off the Efenaar at the Eindhoven Fuzz Club festival 2024. It will be a beautiful noisy celebration that anyone attending will be swept away by. Hey! Ho! Lets Go!
The album is set free into the world by Fuzz Club on May 31st get it here
Gary Powell, May 24
