Parallels Amongst Ourselves, The

Dark, dark, dark and noisy indie rock out of Australia. Super sonic sucker punch. (No, really -- it even sounds like the Oasis song.) Some review somewhere used the word ‘bombastic’ -- yeah, totally... and a half. Holy shit, this fucking rocks. One of the most ballsy and engrossing debuts I’ve heard this year. Menacing and merciless stuff. Loud and rude guitars, piercing riffs, lyrics about unlikely and uncomfortable things. Tight, teeth-out vox a la Ima Robot or Hot Hot Heat. Some parallels here to AFI on the brink of going bad. Impeccably produced. Skip the slow songs -- it’s damn obvious the ass-kickers are what these guys do best.

RIYL: Hot Hot Heat, Franz Ferdinand, The Faint, Arctic Monkeys

try: 2, 5, 3
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1. chilly, scary, primal warm-up. jungle drums and cult incantations. pitches into a crooked gallop. ends with booming drums and witchy effects.
*2. intro vamp and slow-to-fall drums rope you right in. cutting, slashy clashy assault-rifle riff. a blood-aggravater. fucking great.
*3. spiralling lead electric and big noisy warble guitar. hard, hard shoegaze. kickass sticky pick-up and ‘ooh’s. crusher sound. CUT at :16 to end.
4. busy fingerstyle-esque (though i’m sure it’s not) electric. blaring and fierce riff. chorus teeters between bright mainstream and disconcertingly discordant. end vamp: ‘we are all the same.’
*5. downtempo, brutal. hard & heavy hangman drums & tambourine. multi-voiced indie-style vox. a bit of a softer edge, compared to other tracks. about the ‘wheelie bin killers’.
6. downtempo, heavy, draggy. storyteller vibe. eerie choral vox. a smolderer. long fade.
7. ~6 sec to noise. fuzzy oppositional guitar. pedal-on. lots of reverb. slow and sweet and screechy. feedback, ‘ah’s, etc. not great.
8. draggy. jagged guitar, bush knife beat. ethereal bridge (that takes over and ends the track) with piano-like electric guitar loop and tight, crisp, deliberate drums.
9. whiplashy high-pitched washer guitar. fast, punky, driving. dark synth and pounding drums. not much of a melody, but lots of energy.
10. unnervingly off-the-beat bewitcher. not fast, but insistent. noisy guitar-wall chorus.
11. super sly & ominous bass. the polite vox sort of ruin the mood for me... until the drums kick in. then: pushy & tight beat, totally vamp-worthy bass riff, screaming electric chorus. minimalist sing-song bridge not totally unlike the beetlejuice breakdown in ‘the despair factor’. big, scary, larger-than-life vox pack it in. in all, some shining moments, but a disorganised and uneven track.
12. ambient fade-in. fuzzy & echoey vox over lone garage electric. meh.