Artist: Galleons
Title: Swans
Type: EP
Label: Self Released

Ah, you tantalising swines. Understandably seeing as this Nottingham troupe has only been together since last July, this EP is an all too short introduction. Their Myspace page describes them as “tech/grind”, which pretty much covers it, in the same way saying Bill Gates has a few bob to spare, or that Megan Fox is slightly good looking.

Anyway, onto the music: essentially what we have is the sort of needless finger flaying fretting that will have any fan of early Dillinger soiling themselves in joy; while there’s Between the Buried and Me-style flourishes here, it’s mostly just good straight up (as straight up as this sort of thing can be) mathcore. ‘The Compass Points North’ comes barrelling out of the traps like a welterweight Botch, mixed with a dash of December. That’s not to say it doesn’t hit hard; it’s very lean stuff, with nary a guitar line or frenzied double-bass beat wasted. ‘Steve McQueen Can Come’ is much in the same hyper-ventilating vein, albeit with an almost Mogwai-esque end section that somehow fits into the rabid ferocity, and leads excellently into final track ‘As Earth Unfolds’, which reminds of early Sikth’s spiralling riffs, but with inhumane roars replacing the shoe-horned clean vocals.

If there’s one complaint to be made of Galleons, it’s that their breakneck speed and brevity of their songs mean that despite having more time changes than a round the world flight, we’re still left panting for more. However, on this early promise, we should all be asking for more!

http://www.myspace.com/galleonsuk

Steve Jones

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