"Lawman," the opening track on The Early Years, begins by easing you in to Girl Band's world of noise with a sparse, simple beat and repeating fuzzed-out guitar riff that's relatively gentle given the wholly absorbing assault they're about to unleash.
From "Lawman," the band's sound spirals relentlessly downward into a solid block of noise, and Dara Kiely's unleashes his painful, breathless howls. The album holds fast to the same course through the vicious "De Bom Bom" and a slurred cover of Beat Happening's "I Love You," and by the time they get to the eight-minute cover of Blawan's "Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?" they've got you by the throat, held hostage on what feels like a thrash-y and somehow more demented version of the boat ride from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. The album builds constantly to boiling point, pulling back at the last second each time up to the finale, where it stops short, takes aim and comes barrelling back with sheer brutal, devastating force, Kiely exhausting himself with his screams until he falls down, sloppy and spent, into the fading noise.
The Early Years is a ferocious and borderline terrifying slab of feral noise-rock, but it's only a small indication of what it sounds like Girl Band might be capable of.
(Rough Trade)From "Lawman," the band's sound spirals relentlessly downward into a solid block of noise, and Dara Kiely's unleashes his painful, breathless howls. The album holds fast to the same course through the vicious "De Bom Bom" and a slurred cover of Beat Happening's "I Love You," and by the time they get to the eight-minute cover of Blawan's "Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?" they've got you by the throat, held hostage on what feels like a thrash-y and somehow more demented version of the boat ride from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. The album builds constantly to boiling point, pulling back at the last second each time up to the finale, where it stops short, takes aim and comes barrelling back with sheer brutal, devastating force, Kiely exhausting himself with his screams until he falls down, sloppy and spent, into the fading noise.
The Early Years is a ferocious and borderline terrifying slab of feral noise-rock, but it's only a small indication of what it sounds like Girl Band might be capable of.