By Jonny Bakes
I always get a bit of nervous excitement whenever I pick up an album that is described as being alt-rock as it can cover such a broad range of styles varying from things that really float my boat and others that just… don’t. But I do love a bit of a gamble, so today was one of those days where I decided to take the plunge and picked out the second full-length album from Nottingham rockers Haggard Cat. I’ll admit that the title helped draw me into this one, particularly given the madness I’ve had to deal with in the day job this week: it seems that everyone has taken leave of their senses, so ‘Common Sense Holiday’ seems oddly apt!
My initial reaction is that this is absolutely not what I was expecting. What we’ve got here is a pretty hard hitting, Royal Blood-esque two-piece who know how to make some serious noise. Haggard Cat was initially the side project of Heck members Matt Reynolds and Tom Marsh but became the main focus for the guys upon the breakup of Heck (formerly Baby Godzilla). It’s pretty clear from the quality of this album that the “side-project” days are long gone with this very well polished album that has an energy that just doesn’t ebb at all.
One of the particularly energetic tracks on this album has to be ‘European Hardware’ which has a relatively simple, punk influenced, riff that does a good job of tying to kick your teeth in. Couple this with drumming that is so hard hitting that it sounds like they must go through drum skins like there’s no tomorrow and you’ve got yourself one hell of a tune. Like many of the songs on this album it sounds like the inspiration for this is born out of a real frustration for the general state of affairs that the band are experiencing at the moment. And I’m sure there’s many in the Über Kingdom who can completely relate! It could possibly be that the references to “building the wall” is a thinly veiled reference to the B-word that I’m not going to mention here…
Similar themes are explored through the album which highlights a general distrust of the political climate, the apparent lack of progress towards any real change and even movements like Extinction Rebellion (who earned themselves a special album pre-order T-Shirt design with 100% of the profits going towards the ER case). It’s pretty obvious that the guys are very aware of the current affairs and have channelled this into a pretty aggressive and energetic album.
There’s a bit of a surprise waiting in the form of ‘Cheat’. It starts out like many of the others with hellish tempo and serious aggression, yet I can’t shake the feeling that the main riff bears a slight similarity to something that Ghost could have dreamt up. And that’s not where the similarity ends, as there is a surprise saxophone solo in the middle of the song, which is the best kind of saxophone solo if you ask me!
Overall, musically you can expect an interesting blend of an air of punk through the distorted guitar, simple riffs and political themes, with elements of hard rock and an impressive amount of depth for a band who use just two instruments. Not that it’s unusual as we’ve seen many impressive two-pieces out there on the scene, like Royal Blood and The Picturebooks, who continue to impress with their live performances and I would definitely say that Haggard Cat should be considered to be well up there with them. ‘Common Sense Holiday’ is certainly well worth a listen… you never know, you might find your new favourite two-piece band!
- ‘Common Sense Holiday’ is released tomorrow (Friday 13 March). You can get your copy HERE.
- Haggard Cat play the Limelight in Belfast tonight (Thursday 12 March), supporting Elvana. They then head out on their own headlining tour from next Tuesday (17 March):
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