This latest release from Manchester based TNS records seems thoroughly appropriate arriving in a week that central London is being forcibly pedestrianised by Extinction Rebellion activists and over a thousand of them have been arrested.
The six-track EP is split between Danish acoustic punks Stoj Snak and northern dino-core folksters Speed Dinosaurs. The general theme of this offering is our impending doom thanks to the ongoing environmental fuckwittery of mankind and the lyrics blend perfectly with the unplugged fury of very many stringed instruments.
Stoj Snak’s ‘Drink from the well’ has an almost country & western feel to it and ploughs through a catalogue eco-crimes committed by the greedy at the expense of the needy. ‘Apex Predator’ dishes out 40 seconds of furious thrash-skiffle and ‘Cosmic Irony’ is a refreshingly sweary call to arms that demands immediate action to avoid complete annihilation.
Speed Dinosaurs kick off with ‘Fracking’ a cleverly worded tune that bombards the listener with a catalogue of scientific facts explaining the utterly nefarious practice of Fracking. For anyone wanting a condensed summary of why this form of energy production is even more evil that the burning of live kittens; this song neatly summarises the issue in under three minutes. ‘Triceratops’ pays homage the hardest of all dinosaurs and is probably what Motorhead would have sounded like if Lemmy had been born before the invention of electricity. Finally ‘The Biggest Mass Extinction’ cheerily explains how we’re all on course to end up like the dinosaurs but without the need of a giant meteor.
A gloriously apocalyptic record, from an extremely important independent label. Recommended!
By Guy Smallman
