Pet Needs
Intermittent Fast Needs
There’s a very specific era of rock that Pet Needs invoke. Well, maybe not even an ‘era’; maybe, like, a couple of years, where Reuben were the coolest band in the world (still are, tbh), and bands like The Automatic and Yourcodenameis:milo had equal cred among the rock fans and the indie kids. A simpler time, but one looked upon fondly for just how much great stuff that came from it. Pet Needs aren’t exactly bucking that trend, either; the wordy writing and singer Johnny Marriott’s unmistakably regional accent are the perfect accompaniments to alt-rock and indie-punk with this much vigour behind it. In a catalogue that’s been really quite stellar at establishing Pet Needs as a premier-yet-ground-level act, Intermittent Fast Living is right on the money once again.
Three albums in, and there’s clearly no desire to hold back or pivot from the established goal. How Are You marks that out straight away, in a stream-of-consciousness blowout to introduce the key features of our frontman—a talented vocabulist, and a clear overthinker. Both feed into each other, enabled by a panting, quivering energy that Marriott brings like there’s palpable relief in unleashing these thoughts. You get some great sets of lyrics from it though, in the details that colour the corners of Fingernails and Self Restraint, and how conversationalist tones always seem to fly on a song like Trip. There’s big Reuben energy here, in the intensity and the way such an off-kilter style still slips into gold-standard melody.
In that department, there’s almost like a 2000s indie echo that forms the basis of where Pet Needs land. If The Wombats were more committed to joining the crowd of Hundred Reasons-alikes in 2008, they’d have written songs like Separation Anxiety and The Age That Your Were, absolutely. That’s just a fun thought experiment to bring to life, as Pet Needs attempt to tug on it for different shapes on the vamping, crashing Lucid, or the brawny punch-in-the-air of The Optimist. Though without fail, they’ll turn in something strong, and manifested into an alt-rock form with plenty of meat on its bones and sinews tensing below the surface. This does feel like a punk album, as tempered with the sawdust exterior of 2000s Britrock / Xtra Mile-core as it is. But back then, that was an exciting sound, and a band like Pet Needs among the small crop making it feel so again only makes Intermittent Fast Living more refreshing.
It’s just a phenomenally tight and robust package from front to back, as fulfilling on the most cursory, surface-level listen as it is to take a proper deep dive. That isn’t an easy balance to pull off, and yet it’s Pet Needs’ calling card at this stage. They’re three for three in terms of making it work, injecting an oft-secure alt-rock scene with the je ne sais quoi it could definitely do with more of. And every time, they serve as a perfect reminder for how so much of that 2000s stuff could be ported right over to today, and it would sound no less fresh, vibrant or accessible at all. At least this is the next best thing—a band who grasp practically every detail about what could make that scene shine.
For fans of: Reuben, The Automatic, Hundred Reasons
‘Intermittent Fast Living’ by Pet Needs is released on 16th February on Xtra Mile Recordings.
Profiler
A Digital Nowhere
The success of Loathe has likely empowered loads of bands to think that you can just decide to sound like Deftones and pull it off. You can’t. There needs to be, not only some degree of know-how to make it work, but also the added factors to facilitate even a chance of escaping from a notoriously long musical shadow. Keep in mind that, to many, Loathe themselves has only just achieved that last part. That’s the barrier that bands like this need to scale, and where Profiler find themselves outclassed by a fairly large margin. Points for even attempting such a thankless task, sure, but as far as actual output goes, that counts for incredibly little.
So the fact that Profiler do want to sound like Deftones is the most obvious thing in the world. The general mien of the situation is not hard to escape, with the drawn-out vocals and languid nu-metal crossbreeds with alt-rock that pitch for an overall loftier ideal. It’s undoubtedly filtered through a significantly smaller production budget, but on a debut, that isn’t something to nitpick too harshly. What is, is how A Digital Nowhere lacks so much of the scope or wonder that it really only recreates on a surface level. There’s the illusion of grandeur in the flourishes of backing vocals swimming across Animo, or the customary eye on post-rock that informs a number of choices made, but depth is something it all struggles to convey. The comparisons will be made when the proximity is this close, and next to genuine article, Profiler can feel inescapably flat.
Maybe more preventative measures could be taken when, at the same time, they try to be a straight-up nu-metal band and don’t do very well with that either. It’s probably worse if anything, when Profiler are plundering from some of the genre’s cringier cues that—big shock!—aren’t adapted for use in 2024. Zero might be the worst of them, sporting the absolute honker of a hook “You’re never talking like a hero / More like zero” over the downtuned guitars and (likely fake) turntable scratches that are so far removed from any elegance that might crop up elsewhere. It’s all just a weird, clumsy clumping together of semantically-appropriate styles, with little mind paid to how much of a gulf between them there is, even there. And when Mike Evans isn’t that impressive of a singer to at least try and tie things together—his nasal unpleasantness on Operator and The Living Receiver certainly isn’t accomplishing that—it’s almost like there isn’t a consistently strong idea at play here.
In a genre like nu-metal that’s so doggedly reliant on a baseline of enjoyability to get anywhere, that’s a real problem for Profiler. If they can’t effectively soar with power or crash with intensity, it’s an exceptionally featureless limbo they find themselves in. At present, the best feature Profiler have is their own belief to do something more, which isn’t made a reality but at least is an aspiration. There does come a time, though, where running up the clock on good will and potential isn’t good enough anymore, and you have to start producing results. Profiler might still be relatively new, but you just know that’ll hit them like a ton of bricks if they don’t shape up sooner rather than later.
For fans of: Deftones, Linkin Park, Moodring
‘A Digital Nowhere’ by Profiler is released on 16th February on Sharptone Records.
Bloom
Maybe In Another Life
Oh, a fairly new Australian metalcore band! Remember the time when they were all over the place, and you could barely tell most of them apart? Well, thankfully, Bloom aren’t quite a throwback to that; they’re actually fairly good, for a start. And they’re clearly cognisant of what not to do in order to make an impact. It might seem evident of a bar lowered to subterranean levels, but among the competition provided, Bloom’s efforts pay off, even if they’re largely just stronger iterations of what’s come many times before.
That’s what Maybe In Another Life is, at the end of the day, notable in an emotional thesis of modern ennui and anguish and mental struggles reassembled in not-too-unfamiliar patterns. The difference, however, is that Bloom come with a precision that strikes sharply on every target they mean to hit. Just the fact it’s a shorter album helps, for starters, in not wasting time through overextension that would accomplish very little. Keeping the fundamentals lithe and lean is of far greater importance, to where Bloom will even take the shape of straight-up melodic hardcore from it at times. A more acerbic scream from Jono Hawkey combined with harsher slashes of guitar on Siren Song, or a harsher minute-and-change blitz on Laughing Stock, can bring to mind an act like Counterparts, which is never too bad a comparison, is it? Produced in a way that accentuates the harder, steel-capped edges, Bloom’s proficiency within a tight metalcore wreck-session is easily the most decorated feather in their cap.
Which naturally puts pressure on their more melodic side that, if context clues are to be believed, doesn’t quite match up. While it’s not like Bloom are alone in this—or even that it’s all that bad, in a vacuum—they do trip up in some not-uncommon ways. The clean singing isn’t exactly inspiring, in its reliance on expression through power than fluidity or nuance, despite being the expected result of Bloom sticking with their creative angle. The sequencing is maybe a bigger bugbear, parcelling the three towering, melodic obelisks together in the album’s middle for some fluctuating momentum. To be fair, it’s only the final of them, Fragments Of A Dream, that can be seen to wear out its welcome; otherwise, Bloom once again prove they know how to make this thing purr, particularly in the killer melodic swing to the guitar of You & I.
So while there might be the odd twinge of familiarity that doesn’t sit as comfortably—the 2010s Britrock gambit of sampled voicemail / spoken vitriol on the closer Through The Threshold, Beyond The Bend also springs to mind—Bloom are far from sinking as deeply as many of their countrymen did. That alone puts them in comparatively phenomenal stead, especially when they themselves aren’t innovating a great deal, to dispel any notions that that’s a necessity. On pure capability and good instincts, Maybe In Another Life achieves everything it sets out to, and that shouldn’t be downplayed. If anything, Bloom proving that a baseline can still be good and worthwhile on its own merits is cause for long-overdue celebration.
For fans of: Counterparts, Casey, Gideon
‘Maybe In Another Life’ by Bloom is released on 16th February on Pure Noise Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
