Album: White Rose Movement

So this is what you get if four-fifths of your line-up were raised as children on a hippie commune: strident electro-clash rock that appears to possess not the slightest trace of wholesome brown-rice attitude or folksy charm, but rather a fascination with the sort of sleazy netherworld explored by their heroes DAF and Depeche Mode. Or at least, that seems to be the spur behind tracks such as "Pig Heil Jam" and "Idiot Drugs", though it's hard to tell from lyrics that sound like like "Fighting/ Feel like a whiting/ Modern times". The album opens powerfully with "Kick" and "Girls in the Back", pounding techno-rock grooves with just a soupçon of funk and strained high-register vocals. An early peak is scaled with "Love Is a Number", which borrows the bassline of Joy Division's "Transmission" and straps it to an angry-wasp synth part, but one can't avoid noticing how similar all the songs are, each piece pounding away with little variation in tempo or dynamic range, chips chiselled from the same monumental block of sound. Quite thrilling in individual doses, though.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Love Is a Number', 'Girls in the Back'

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