Split Dogs
Nice N’ Rough
Anyone who heard Split Dogs’ breakthrough immediately knew what this follow-up would be like. Lodged in between year-one punk and ‘70s geezer-rock as they are, tremendous versatility isn’t high on the agenda. It’s handy that Here To Destroy was pretty good, then. Split Dogs’ best quality is the knack for staying hungry and vital despite their dual throwback ballasts, carried over with no bother to Nice N’ Rough. It’s just…more of the same, really, albeit widening the classic-rock net slightly past their vaunted Status Quo influence. Not too far afield, but it’s fun to hear them have a go at Van Halen’s Panama on Leave It Alone, or even a Black Sabbath riff on the intro to Suffer.
Crossing the half-hour mark is a bit of a blow against the album, though. In the past, a 20-minute sesh made Split Dogs feel no-nonsense and uncompromising, which Nice N’ Rough tapers off on after so long. At least it’s not a fundamental issue; it’d just take some pruning to get these pieces working at optimal capacity again. Split Dogs are the kind of band you do want to like and root for, too, because their disposition towards old-style punk and rock is so strong. The dirty pub-rock guitar tone hits often when it hasn’t been ravaged by age, accompanied by Harry Martinez’s ciggie-ash vocals rasping and spitting, and maintaining a surprisingly melodic (if nasal) shape on Speed Demon and Power Out.
What’s commendable is that, even with the ceiling that’s firmly affixed above Split Dogs—and which can lower than for most, at that—they don’t seem fazed by it. Nice N’ Rough isn’t an album presented as limited; Split Dogs treat old punk and rock ‘n’ roll as if it’s still the most exciting sound in the world. What’s more, they feel more exciting for it, a far cry from how worn-down contemporary bands in this niche often are. If the next album is more of the same yet again, that’d be totally fine.
For fans of: Amyl And The Sniffers, Grade 2, The Meffs
‘Nice N’ Rough’ by Split Dogs is released on 25th September on Venn Records.
Pain Of Truth
Pain Of Truth
You know hardcore? See those four letters at the beginning? Yeah, that’s Pain Of Truth. They’ve stripped out the plethora of guests from their 2023 debut Not Through Blood, bulked up a bit, and joined the genre brawl all themselves. There’s not a lick of originality to be found, but Pain Of Truth show less than no interest in that; anything further would distract from the slaughterfest. It’s likely why the guitars and bass have been ramped up to obscene levels, and blessed with a Will Putney production job for their troubles. And with Michael Brian Smith as the archetypal spluttering Rottweiler up front (and never shy about bringing along his buddies for a gang shout), Pain Of Truth feel like the concentrated essence of street-level toughness. Just spin Filth In Your Head and weep with joy at a song about fighting inner demons that sounds like it could actually throw a punch.
There’s a bit of a hip-hop bent, too, naturally. It’s the done thing with this sort of concrete-cracking swagger (and that art is only a couple of bling effects away from being a crunk cover), and another example of zero individuality being no hindrance whatsoever. It’s actually a bit remarkable how Pain Of Truth can stick the landing through brute force alone. Regardless of how literally a million other hardcore bands have songs just like This Hatred and Beyond The Damage in their pocket, this is no weaker for it. Hell, when Chinatown, NY slips in a literal fight scene among its street-tough groove, doing way more might just be the point. It’s not an incredible feat in its field or anything, but like how SPEED have become the de facto face of the beatdown’s modern generation by simply doing it well, Pain Of Truth could be not far behind. That might be more impressive, if anything.
For fans of: Judiciary, Incendiary, God’s Hate
‘Pain Of Truth’ by Pain Of Truth is released on 25th September on DAZE STYLE.
BRAT
Manslayer
If you too are bored of ‘brat’ and its semantic ilk clogging up heavy music vernacular (see, for instance, this band’s spurious micro-genre ‘bimboviolence’), fret not—here, they’re basically glorified SEO tags. In fact, you may be particularly gauche and call this Cannibal Corpse With A Woman; it’s not too far from the truth. There is more to Manslayer than just that, thankfully. BRAT’s female-centred approach actually achieves a lot, subverting death-metal tropes of women as merely corpses-to-be, and pulling off a fairly fun role-reversal with Liz Selfish as the titular ‘manslayer’. Furthermore, that opens up opportunities to comment on women’s health nightmares on Botchtox and Speculum Bleed, and young girls navigating predatory older men on Trophy Hunting. There’s a current of how much the female experience is rooted in violence, which is rather profound for such a stock-sounding death-metal album. (Does the end of the outro leading back into the intro also represent the cyclical, seemingly unbreakable nature of said violence? Dunno, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt anyway!)
If only the rest of Manslayer could punch above like that. ‘Stock-sounding’ was the description before, but even that implies something more primal and feral than what we’ve got here. That only comes in small fragments, like the rubber-limbed drumming at the end of Botchtox, or the fanbelt whirring for some added chaos on Asking For Hell. Otherwise, Manslayer is a remarkably underpowered example of its genre. It’s not a terribly memorable album as it is, sodden further by how averse to flying off the handle BRAT seem to be. Selfish grunts out her vocals so tensely and inflexibly that she sounds about to burst a blood vessel at any given moment. The production does this no favours, either—grimy and shoestring to invoke death-metal at its roots, only to give BRAT even less to work with. It’s not a good sign when Heretic Burning chooses to sample what sounds like a screaming child, only for it to be too small and ineffectual in the mix to even seem provocative.
It absolutely could be worse, to be clear. 17 tracks would be unbearable if there weren’t some underpinning instincts, and Revocation’s David Davidson jumps onboard Femicidal Violence for a solo, winding up with the album highlight. Nevertheless, Manslayer proves a rather lopsided album overall, as the divide between strong concepts and an execution in need of work seldom seems to close. BRAT aren’t without quality or even charm, but they’re really hamstrung in their current state. ‘Bimboviolence’ is already a meaningless name; it doesn’t need to be redundant in practice, too.
For fans of: Cannibal Corpse, Pest Control, Esmasculator
‘Manslayer’ by BRAT is released on 25th September on Prosthetic Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall