If you’ve seen a festival lineup this year—any of them; take your pick—you’ve seen the name Bleech 9:3. They’ll be making the rounds at a rate of knots this summer, emerging seemingly out of nowhere but already tipped to the moon and back. So what’s the deal? Another TikTok flash-in-the-pan thrown onto a bandwagon whose suspension is scraping the ground? Well, their song Jacky is picking up some steam with the attentionally-deficient lot over there, but that doesn’t appear to be all this is.
Instead, the genesis and rise of Bleech 9:3 (incomprehensible name and all) is decidedly its own thing. Frontman Baz Quinlan and guitarist Sam Duffy met at an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting, with the project to follow being built on personal recovery and second chances. Even their sound is hardly in step with the popular consensus. As an alternative Irish band in the 2020s, you’d expect post-punk all day long. Bleech 9:3, however, are more closely tied to grunge, and even that’s not exhaustive. Jacky opens their self-titled debut EP and, with its frenzied bass and squealing, spluttering groove, genuinely calls to mind Korn and other nu-metal noisemakers.
Between that and how noteworthily intense their live shows are known to be, Bleech 9:3 are more at home alongside a band like Keo, in the ranks of not-very-indie indie bands for whom that hasn’t hampered their ascent. Both are all the better for it, in fact, though Bleech 9:3 do pull ahead quite readily. Across this EP’s five tracks, you get a great cross-section of what this band is and what key strengths can be pulled from that. In selling the beaten-down earnestness currently superintended by their countrymen Fontaines D.C., Bleech 9:3 are already dab hands at exploring its range and breadth. Jacky is a quick-cut, harrowing vignette on addiction; Underrated and Cannonball are tar-thick wallows in malaise; and No Surprise is effectively just a cry for help.
Next to your usual applicants of ‘indie riser’ hype, Bleech 9:3 have immeasurably more significance on their side. There’s nothing ephemeral or throwaway about what’s here, even as a relatively quick package to get their ideas on the board. It’s fully-formed already, too, to the extent that a band so reliant on heavy, unkempt riffage can be ‘fully-formed’. The good thing is how that doesn’t feel for show or performative; there’s enough baked into Bleech 9:3 to make it believably dour and dense. It’s especially useful on Cannonball, where feedback bleeds out of a slow, hulking mass, devoid of light or levity. In the wrong hands with the wrong perspective, it’d be dreary beyond belief. From Bleech 9:3, who’ve evidently lived this, it’s anything but.
But it’s not all unfriendliness, all the way down. At the end of the day, mainstream rock bones still form the skeleton of Bleech 9:3, and therefore, melody still matters. Though, at the same time, it’s not favoured one way or the other. Quinlan has a tunefulness in his voice to differentiate from his roughnecked peers, but there’s never elation there. More so, it conveys vulnerability on Underrated and No Surprise, or even fear of the unknown on Ceiling. Similarly on that closing cut, a quicker tempo and shocks of weedling guitar might be mistaken for upbeat if the song wasn’t soaked to the skin in its vibe.
There’s only so much you can dissect a five-song EP like this, but Bleech 9:3 seem to have put in the effort to make it a satisfying dig-through. More than that, there’s a lot to really like about them already, all the way through. Not only does their variety and flexibility come naturally, but it always seems to land, while the songs within are so loaded with real, unmistakable feeling. Perhaps it even justifies why Bleech 9:3’s push has been so universal, arguably more so than a lot of these buzz bands. They feel ready to take on any environment without compromising who they are by even an inch, and that can be Holy Grail-rare in this age of music. Perhaps the hype is worth believing after all; you’ll have no shortage of opportunities this summer to see for yourself.
For fans of: Keo, Wunderhorse, Sick Joy
‘Bleech 9:3’ by Bleech 9:3 is released on 15th May on Polydor Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
