Innercity Pirates: Cutting Noses, Chasing Tales

Urban Welsh buckling the punk swash.

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The cover art shows a digital wolf mid-attack, and the debut from these Welsh spittle punks is fittingly savage.

Packing a rabid pop bite, this is an unrelenting assault on the hook bone, from the snarling glam-slam of Bang Bang to the Pixies bark of Eat The Paint and the funk-punk Rapturisms of the appropriately titled Ear Sex.

Singer Russell Toomey – former frontman with post-Britpop yowlers My Red Cell – is a contrary beast, coming across as romantic punkoid poet on the country-thrasher Love’s Over, and unreconstructed rock alpha male on She’s A Bastard: ‘I only wanted a bitch/I never expected a bastard like this’.

Confrontational, cocky and brash in a way few modern punk bands dare to be in an era when one eye is always on the Green Day dollar, this album promises to be an unavoidable marauding force on the oceans of 2011.

Mark Beaumont

Mark Beaumont is a music journalist with almost three decades' experience writing for publications including Classic Rock, NME, The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Times, Uncut and Melody Maker. He has written major biographies on Muse, Jay-Z, The Killers, Kanye West and Bon Iver and his debut novel [6666666666] is available on Kindle.