One look at the monochrome artwork for Slow Riot’s ‘Cathedral’ EP and I’m instantly transported back to the days when I spent my afternoons scanning the pages of the NME for the next underground artist on which to spend my limited funds. The result was almost always some random Org records release, and Slow Riot are a band who could easily have fitted on that remarkably random label with their dark, post-punk sound recalling the likes of Strangelove, Seafood, The Cure and Joy Division. A remarkably apt name, Slow Riot’s music is the sound of street violence slowed down and filmed in black and white, the camera moving silently across scenes of balletic carnage, as the band veer from the widescreen beauty of opening track ‘demons’ to the thunderous, barely-repressed rage of ‘city of culture’.
Opening with the bass-driven ‘demons’, there’s a palpable sense of desolation wrapped up in the endless layers of guitars. Sharing a lineage with the shoegaze bands of the early 90s, Slow Riot explore their sound methodically, and a stark beauty emerges from the frazzled guitars and pulsing beat. It’s strangely beautiful, although not in any conventional understanding of the word, and it suggests an unpredictably that only becomes more apparent as the EP progresses. In contrast to the EP@s opening gambit, the band explode into action on ‘city of culture’, a ferocious blast of sonically-charged guitars, throbbing bass and muscular percussion that is reminiscent of Urusei Yatsura, early Sonic youth and Mclusky. Feral and increasingly unhinged as the track plunges giddily towards its conclusion, ‘city of culture’ is an adrenalin charged blast that gives way all too suddenly to the taut ‘Adele’ which pits distorted vocals against guitars that echo and chime where previously they spat and clawed. As the track progresses it meanders through hypnotic passages to a bloody conclusion and, as the guitars finally fizz into vibrant life once more, the jet stream of hyper-speed riffing tears away the thin veneer of civility and leaving only the exposed muscle and sinew beneath before the whole thing careers to a brutal halt. It’s another stylistic volte face for the EP’s finale, the rippling ‘Cooper’s dream’, which returns the listener to the guitar-strewn ambience of the opening track. A subtle, eerie track that hauls itself out of its initial torpor to deliver one last sting as the music mounts one last stand in the face of the record’s impending end.
Slow Riot are a band who offer much and who consistently deliver. The songs are expertly arranged and the band treat their music like the soundtrack to a film not yet completed in which the music is made to fit the mood rather than simply ground out according to formula. Having been recorded in the Manic Street Preachers’ Faster studios in Cardiff, it’s tempting to say that the band incorporated some of the atmosphere of that titular piece, and certainly Slow Riot share a certain amount of DNA with the Manics’ ‘Holy Bible’ opus. There’s darkness here, but not entirely without hope, an intensity that is all the more oppressive for being frequently reined in rather than allowed to explode in a pretty but ultimately unfulfilling explosion. It is this intensity, along with the varied nature of the songs, that keeps you returning to the EP time and again. Dark, brooding and subtle, although more than capable of delivering a vicious punch, ‘Cathedral’ is a brilliantly dark EP that will stay with you long after it has finished playing.
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