Turbowolf - The Big Cut

Take a dab of electro, a massive slab of rock and mix it with the fuck you attitude that Turbowolf ooze and you have ‘The Big Cut’ EP. It’s fast, it’s manic and it comes at you like a bull. While the pieces that it borrows are clear for all to see, Turbowolf are not here to give us sloppy seconds.

‘Ancient Snake’, the opening track, is a pure statement of intent. The hook is unfussy, the drums are commanding and Chris Georgiadis’s yelps are defiant. It may not be breaking new ground, but good lord does it like trampling over the ground it knows. Hell at little over two minutes, it hasn’t even got a welcome to overstay. If DFA1979 had grown up with a little more punk and a lot less electro, here lies the result.

‘The Big Cut’ and ‘Things Could Be Good Again’ start to divert from this template and it’s here we get to see how well they’re at crafting pure, unadulterated, rock. ‘The Big Cut’ especially; with its huge breakdown halfway through, before the main riff is taken over by the bass is particularly epic. It just keeps on building up to a wall of sound that could take down countries if it wanted to. Moreover, the way Georgiadis spits “things will be good again” on, err, ‘Things Could Be Good Again’ is hypnotic.

But then we’re left with ‘TW2’. And after everything before it, it’s hard not to feel let down. It’s eerie static noise that lacks the propulsion of the preceding songs, but more so the fun of them as well, it’s hard not to feel cheated really. It’s clear that Turbowolf have designs on being more than just the next great English rock band, but ‘TW2’ doesn’t take them anywhere interesting or vital for them to achieve that.

Then again, who can complain when the word free enters into the equation? Coupled with the notion that most unsigned bands who get round to releasing an EP never manage to hit upon this kind of excitement and there is no real reason if you’re fan of rock that you shouldn’t be hammering on the download button already.