Times New Viking - Stay Awake EP

To the uninitiated, Times New Viking could perhaps be very easy to dismiss as lo-fi punks with nothing but noise. Thankfully Stay Awake continues the very pleasing trend of sticking a very large finger up at any doubters. Weighing in at roughly 11 minutes, this is a concentrated burst that is more than welcome.

Starting with ‘Call & Respond’, a howl of a track, the guitar hook it’s built on slowly nests in the head while the barks of Beth Murphy and Adam Elliot angrily bite at the listener’s ear.

Sure, there can be times though that the lo-fi approach grates instead of seduces; ‘Hate Hate Hate’ and its thunderous drums last for all of 58 seconds before cutting out, which is a shame. When it works, though, it really shows; No Sympathy is the stand out track on the EP. Melancholic melody and almost bruised vocals from Murphy barely make it through the fuzz, turning it into the beating heart of the record and a welcome contrast from the frantic punk elsewhere.

‘Stay Awake’ may only be a stopgap for the band, but when the songs sound this good, even behind all the reverb, it’s a more than welcome one.