Gnarwolves - Funemployed

Technology is ridiculous, isn't it? I pre-ordered this 7" from my phone sat on a train heading back to Stoke, frankly, because I could. I hadn't listened to Gnarwolves a lot but I know there's a lot of hype around them and it's a joint release between BSM and Tangled Talk, which makes it listenable at the very least.

The cover feels so very FUN PUNK to me. There's a skateboard and a boombox and a slingshot??? I don't understand. It's not really my kind of art style but it definitely has a strong identity so that's a plus for it. (note: I realise how utterly ridiculous this whole paragraph sounds but this isn't the usual kind of thing I write about so forgive me)

This I can get behind though, partially translucent tri-colour with a pizzagram on the label? Yes yes yes yes, excellent work. Nice inner sleeve for a 7", printed lyrics are always a plus as well. For you fans of pressing info, this is from the first pressing with this colourway being limited to 300. There was also a purple, green and blue splatter on white limited to 200. That sold out in about a day, so there was a second pressing limited to 500... which also sold out. Impressive. I'm not bothered enough to try to collect all the colours, pretty happy with this by itself to be honest.

My judgement of the cover, as it happens, was pretty accurate. This is definitely a fun punk 7", the four songs clocking in at a swift 10 minutes. They're brash, loud and pretty enjoyable. I don't think it's going to change my life or anything, but it's good. My favourite song is probably the first track, Melody Has Big Plans, mostly because of the excellent breakdown in the middle and the near-"bleh" towards the end. Yep, not much more to say here. I'll probably try and get their next release whenever it comes, so expect to see them crop up again in future (maybe I'll have more words to say about them then)

Axes self-titled

I've got a few things to catch up with, but I'm gonna skip forwards a bit and do a couple of new items that I got in the past few weeks mainly because they're pretty rad and I want an excuse to post about some coloured records. Right? Right.

A couple of months ago, you may remember I was sent a single for free (still not over how cool that was), and in that post I said I thought the label that released it might be a source for future posts. Lo and behold, here we are and I've thrown money at Enjoyment Records for a couple of things. Here is the first, co-released with my beloved Big Scary Monsters handling the CD version and Enjoyment doing the vinyl.

This is the debut mini-album from Axes. The band logo is quite nice, and I like that they chose to make the cover both colourful and geometrically pleasing. It's almost as if they wanted to make me happy. You might notice my sleeve got a bit bent in the post which is annoying, but the record itself is fine so no biggie.

Suuuuper-nice splatter on this fella. It's meant to be blue, yellow and purple splatter but the yellow seems to have gotten a bit lost - you can see little hints of it, but the photo doesn't quite capture that. Still gorgeous though.

Time for a bit of music chat then. Axes can be described, I suppose, as instrumental math-rock. Now of course, hearing that phrase means (for me at least) Hella immediately spring to mind. Hella wouldn't be the right comparison for Axes though, they're musically closer to the likes of Talons and Adebisi Shank. So, in short, somewhat less abrasive. It is a little jerky though, don't worry about that. It's actually really good, for a first... mini-album I suppose. Seven tracks isn't an EP, it isn't an album. It's sort of half way between the two. Arguably, it's the perfect length for this. Enough time for a lot of ideas to be thrown into the mix, not so long that it gets stale. I listened to it a few times through on a sunny bus journey to and from a camping shop (festivals - needs must) and it suited the weather pretty perfectly. My favourite track is probably the wonderfully titled Middle East 17, only slightly more for the lovely groove it finds than the thought of Brian Harvey. I'll hopefully be seeing them at 2000 Trees this weekend, which should be great fun especially as the forecast is what can only be described as "hellishly sunny". This release is available for whatever price you choose to pay from the Enjoyment Records bandcamp, so it's worth giving a try.