Fuzz Lightyear - Zero Guilt

With a live reputation that precedes them and fingers in just about every slice of pie that the various music scenes in Leeds are cooking up, with ‘Zero Guilt’, Fuzz Lightyear look well poised to remain on course to becoming a true cult band. It’s impossible to miss the similarities between the agitated, atonal vocal style of frontman Ben Parry and that of a certain Joe Talbot, but where most post-IDLES breakthrough artists have co-opted the Bristol noiseniks’ penchant for frustrated rock peppered with shout-along choruses, Fuzz Lightyear instead continue the fraught, intense chaos of their late-2010s breakthrough. Opener ‘White And Green’ sees this taken to eleven in particular, while ‘Berlin, 1885’ does so with a segue into decisively post-rock guitars. It doesn’t always hit: ‘Sit Awake’ amps up both the gruff of Ben’s voice and the spikiness of its guitars to only sound more disparate, while his detached delivery occasionally suggests a lack of interest rather than resigned exasperation. It’s sprawling centrepiece ‘Aberfan’ which is the most interesting – and likely musically polarising – here, though. A six-plus minute track, it begins by channelling ‘80s indie, its spacious production and echoey drums contrasting with chiming guitar lines, while Ben’s vocal finds a soft, (almost) melodic tone. Inspired by the catastrophic mining disaster that destroyed the titular village in 1966, “her newborn dances in coal” is as mind-bogglingly visceral and heartbreaking a line as will be delivered all year.