The Dead Formats – ‘Self Titled’ EP (Visible Noise)
CD Reviews
Written by Johnny H
Wednesday, 23 September 2009 07:12
My age old rule of never miss the support band, has always stood me well when discovering those brand new breaking bands likely to headline enormodomes some time soon, and I’m pleased to add to that list Essex six piece The Dead Formats.
Having recently witnessed a brief segment of the band’s recent support to Lostprophets I had seen enough to whip over to the merch booth and pick up a copy of this six-track debut EP.
If highly charged, politically minded, punk rock with a middle finger firmly planted towards the current UK scene, sounds like your bag then these guys will tick all of your boxes. Taking influences from the Red Wedge end of the Eighties UK scene and coating them in a fair amount of prime US hardcore angst, the likes of ‘Step It Up’ and ‘Stop Talkin, Start Dancin’ have a sound distinctive enough to confuse the mass populous whilst setting those slightly more switched on nodding like proverbial dogs.
Standout track for me is the no fucking nonsense riffing of ‘One Of The Faces’ that spits venom whilst retaining a certain pop like angle thanks to the duel vocals of Darren Ditton and Francis Waller, and gets me to thinking this sounds like the band The International Noise Conspiracy once promised to be.
Elsewhere ‘Again And Again’, ‘Dirty White Shoes’ and live favourite ‘Wind Up’ all make for a compelling adrenalin charged twenty minutes of thought provoking rock music.
The Dead Formats are just like the dog your psycho mate at school used to own, noisy as fuck, sinewy as fuck, and lethal as fuck.