• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Mar 06, 2014 Eagulls By Hays Davis

If guitar bands are finished, no one bothered to tell the band Eagulls. Eagulls, their debut album after forming in 2009, is built to make damn sure someone will be paying attention.

The Leeds-based quintet wraps post-punk’s dark shadings over an engine of punk urgency and sends the whole thing howling downhill. Singer George Mitchell sees no use whatsoever in dialing down or modulating his vocals, egging on his band mates as much as they do him while blasting at the top of his register in a near-yelp of a call to arms.

Rather than quiet-loud dynamics, the band is effective with more of a simmer-boil approach at times. “Footsteps,” recalling Killing Joke at their best, manages to shift the guitars through multiple levels of tension before finally exploding the dam with Mitchell riding gleefully atop the aural havoc. “Soulless Youth” operates similarly while taking some intriguing melodic twists.

Elsewhere, the band explores the joys of unbridled forward momentum, as with the breakneck “Fester/Blister.” It’s the sound of a bunch of guys getting the same kicks in the studio as they have on one stage after another since their start. (www.eagulls.co.uk)

Author rating: 6.5/10