It is with great sadness that I inform Keep It Fast readers that London’s Cutting Pink With Knives have come to an end. The synthesiser-heavy pop/hardcore scribble have this (snippet taken from their myspace blog) to say:

“We are splitting up. No drama, no hatred between us . We’re just calling this shit to an end.
It’s hard to know how to say goodbye to something thats been the most important thing in our lives for the past 3 or 4 years, nothing i say can really encapsulate what this has meant to us and how odd it will be to not have it around anymore.
We’ve done a lot of things that we’re all really proud of, played some amazing shows, released lots of records and generally had a great time, but its time that we go our cute little separate ways.”

The band will play 6 7 final shows (3 on our fair shores, before playing in France and 3 2 dates in Belgium.)

I was lucky enough to see Cutting Pink With Knives several times and I can honestly say they were one of the most entertaining, wild and amusing bands I have seen. They will be missed. I wish Alex, Chris and Eddy good luck with their future projects.

Their 2nd album, ‘Populuxxe‘ (reviewed here) is available from Holy Roar Records. Their myspace blog also reveals details of a final release of their last recordings.

(I wish bands I really like would stop splitting up, it’s giving me a bad omen complex!)

Sounds

If you fancy sampling some CPWK pop-fun, click below to listen to ‘Airz‘ from ‘Populuxxe.’

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Links

Cutting Pink With Knives Myspace
Label

There is a lesson to be learnt about bands and that is always give them a chance as you may just find a gem. Of course at the same time there can be some terrifying ‘how are these famous??’ bands, such as 30 Seconds To Mars. But before I start one of those fucking annoying comment wars like on every youtube video, (no YOUR mum) I will cut to the chase…

One of my links led me to Lancashire’s Alternative to every music genre, Bikini Black Special. The 5 piece seem to have put on their dark worship robes at a full moon and thrown into the pot every type of music they can think of. But instead of a explosion of shit occurring on the final synth loop, these guys have completed the impossible. Or have they? Actually they have!

With a beautiful female vocal range mixed in with snapping bites from the male backing, it makes you listen to the lyrics rather then the usual Friday night pub band where they are just shouting to the drum beat (bark, bark!). As for the music itself, it is better to just watch the video at the bottom of this page.

Keep it fast spoke with Bikini Black Special to find out what is going on in their subversively seductive minds:

When you walk onto the stage to an audience who doesn’t know who you are, how do you try and make an impression to the crowd?

By standing impassively in a line, as if the Pet Shop Boys had somehow magically reproduced and staring, just… staring. Alternatively, usually what we do speaks for itself, just go in hard and loud and kick the whole thing off as we mean to go on.

Is there any difference between the tracks you record and performing them live?

Not really, no - we’re pretty proud of the fact that we do this big wide studio sound out there in the big wide world. We make a few more mistakes live, like.

Do you have any BBS followers? If so do they dress up for the occasion?

There’s a few dotted around - we keep seeing more and more of our world-famous Zombie Invasion t-shirt in the crowds, and occasionally bump into them on the street. We have a pretty wide fan base, ravers, metallers, old folks, and of course the fairly intense acoustic folk contingent - so they all dress quite variably.

Have you had any offers to have your music featured in a b-movie? If not would you accept offers?

Some animators wanted to use BBS tunes for the soundtrack to a movie about an alien invasion being battled by a tea drinking private investigator. Never heard any more about it. We’d be delighted to be on a B-movie soundtrack though, especially if we could be extras in the movie, zombies or aliens or something. Even better if there was a scene in the movie with zombie/alien band playing in some zombie/alien bar. It’s the dream.

If you were performing live and there was a power cut, could you still give the crowd a good time? If so how?

Using Laura’s firelighting skills, Paddy’s culinary skills, and Bobby and Andy’s raw physical strength and powers of intimidation, we’d cook Jonti and give everyone a good feed.

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Below is live footage of them playing the track Nagasaki… Enjoy!

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Links:

Bikini Black Special official myspace page

Due to being in one of those soul crushing moods, I very much doubt my review of this months Sound Check CD will be enitrely favourable. It also doesn’t help that the massive tool, aka Jared Leto from 30 Seconds To Shitting Mars is staring at me with his cold, dead eyes and a hair that looks as if it’s been styled by a blind, no armed, retarded sheep. Anyway, let’s get on with this:

Brigade - What Are You Waiting For?

I feel a bit sorry for Brigade. I mean, does anyone actually give a shit? From this average-at-best effort they sound like a poor mans Colour Of Fire, albeit without the emotion, angst and riffs. Traditional, safe, plodding rock music that’s flogged to death almost every night at Battle of The Bands tournaments all around the country.

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Attack In Black - Marriage

Thank god the vocals sound slightly gravely. It’s perhaps the one saving grace that ‘Marriage’ by Ontario’s Attack In Black has. This is possibly one of the most boring punk bands I have ever heard and that’s saying something; hey, I’ve heard the Boys Like Girls album! Ew.

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Glass & Ashes - We Will Hang For This

Ventura’s Glass & Ashes seem to take the gruff, barbaric punk rock attack of The Bronx and stretch it out wide, like The Rock rolling pastry. They also add a large heap of melodic song play, as well as some harmonies that were last seen when Hot Water Music were the toast of gruff-speaking punk.

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Blacklisted - I Am Weighing Me Down

Obviously Blacklisted have been scraped from the same shoe that gave us the awesome power of The Hope Conspiracy. However, unlike Kevin Baker’s mob, Blacklisted manage to peddle out a minute-and-a-half of pretty featureless and lacklustre hardcore that, despite being fast-paced, smacks of ‘going through the motions.’ Still, the drumming is top-notch stuff.

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Torche - Grenades

In a similar style to Mastodon, Torche’s sound lurches and lumbers, spraying the listener with meaty guitars and bass-heavy rumblings. The sporadic and mind-bending guitar-solo halfway through is a thing of pure beauty, whilst the drums pound away like steel pistons. Best track so far.

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Thrice - Come All You Weary

I admire Thrice for stepping away from the post-hardcore/emo quagmire (gigiddy!) they’ve always staggered about in, but this just feels so forced and quite frankly, sounds like they’ve spent too long listening to ‘The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me‘ and decided to rip it off but not even in a good/interesting way. Dull.

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Gregor Samsa - Jeroen Van Aken

Gregor Samsa sound like their soundtracking some pretentious arthouse flick. On ‘Jeroen Van Aken’(the real name of painter Hieronymus Bosch) they mix wonderful atmospheric soundscapes, with gorgeous female/male vocals that are the very pinnacle of delicate and fragile (albeit in a sense of softness, not weakness.) A luscious, glorious piece of work that puts every other artist on this CD to shame.

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Pilgrim Fathers - Nine Hands Of The Octopus

This is pretty good actually. Sounds a bit like 5 guys messing around with various samples, effects pedals, whilst quaffing large amounts of homebrew, before launching into some heavy-sounding psychedelic stoner rock. A spiralling noise of creativity and spontaneous enjoyment.

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Textures - Old Days Born Anew

This is more like it. Textures shift things up a gear with their speed-metal attack that owes more to the technical riffs of Meshsuggah than the lightning ferocity of say, Slayer. The synthesiser breakdowns add a nice touch, complimenting the harsh heaviness of the main body of the track excellently, as to the garbled sound-effects. Impressive.

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Lights.Action! - Story Of A Broken Boy

This one time, I fell down the stairs and ended up in hospital. It was horrible, much like listening to Lights.Action! who seem to be redefining crapness for 2008.

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Horse The Band - New York City

Well, Horse the Band sound different. Despite the familiar keyboard intro, the bombardment of near-death metal shrieks/cacophony of noise is slightly over-whelming. The distorted keyboard is perhaps the best thing about this track, which is possibly the weakest HTB song I’ve heard. Actually, I’ve decided that this is really rubbish, sorry.

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No Age - Eraser

Ah good old No Age. The familiar slow build up to the eruption of guitar/drone/drums seems to be of great prominence in the band’s repertoire, but it’s one that still sounds brilliant. Great atmospheric noise-pop, that sounds more like a jam session than an actual song.

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Cancer Bats - Pray For Darkness

The first time I heard Cancer Bats I thought they were awful. I’m on my second listen and despite the terrible lyrics (“PRAY FOR DARKNESS!!!!” – dull-metal-cliché alert) they sound ok. Rapid delivery, but having wanky guitar solos on an 90 second long song is a bit meh.

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The Secret - Funeral Monolith

I must say I was quite shocked by The Secret’s sound. My original thought was ‘piss-water emo band’ but it turns out they’re a raging bag of hardcore/metal hatred. Obvious comparisons have to be made with Converge; the riffage alone stands up well alongside Kurt Ballou’s guitar shredding and the vocals sound particularly horrifying, akin to Satan singing in the shower whilst downing cough medicine.

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Evil Bebos - Cronus

I’m not sure what Rock Sound’s criteria is with these CDs. Is there something in the contract that says ‘must have long drawn-out piece of music by relatively unknown post-rock band.’ Anway, if they think I’m sitting through all 13 minutes of Evil Bebos (named after some dog) then they’re sorely mistaken. Sorry, but my attention span is bloody awful these days. (Saying that, I have listened and it’s pretty damn good.)

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Links

See above, I’m off to start my Doom 2 speedrun using only the super shotgun. Amazing scenes.

Since Essex duo Kunt and the Gang were introduced at Christmas by Keep It Fast everybody has has being reading about them! As you will see from our ‘most popular’ list they have even beaten interviews by Ex super band Some Girls and Electro-Industrial duo Angelspit! How is this possible some of you may ask?

It looks like over the last couple of years they have penetrated the minds of all under 30’s with their sexellent tales of multi-way wankage, obsessive thoughts of ‘front bottoms’ and of course a true milf ‘ballad’ to Carol Vorderman.

So as Kunt and the Gang release their third album ”one last wank and one last cry” which is the final to the wank/cry trilogy, we ask them a selection of intimate questions:

What can we look forward to if we slip in this new album into our players?

You can look forward to such a barrage of filth that you’ll feel the urge to run a flannel over your knackers when you’ve finished. I think this album has some of our best songs yet, “Men with beards (what are they hiding?)” is already becoming a firm favourite at gigs, and “I’m gonna lick you out” seems to be making ladies moist.

Has there being any pressure/conflict between you and Little Kunt in the making of this new album? If so dare we ask?

He’s been pressing me for more of an input, so I humoured him by letting him sing a couple of duets. He was off his face on crack most of the time so you didn’t know whether he’d be turning up at the studio waving a Swiss army knife around or crashed out at home with a pantful of runny big jobs.

Where do you get your inspiration from to make these masterpieces?

It stems from having a lot of time on your hands, which invariably turns into having your cock in your hand. I thought I would have run out of ideas by now but the more you tour, the more people that come up and tell you about the time they shit themselves and you think, oooh that’s gonna make a good song!

Has the lovely Carol Vorderman ever left feedback on the track you made about your feelings for her?

I was sure when I wrote the song that she would hear it, feel the love and it would end up in me inserting my manhood into her frontbottom. Unfortunately that still has yet to happen, but also I haven’t heard anything from her lawyers which makes me think maybe she hasn’t heard it yet.

If you could of had any guest vocals on the new album, who would they be?

It would have to be some female pop star I was trying to get my end away with, so we’d end up stuck in a booth together and I could barricade the door and do a Joseph Fritzel. So to rephrase the question: ‘Which female popstars would you like to take hostage and systematically abuse over a period of several years?’… It would probably have to be any of Girls Aloud apart from the wafty ginger one, Belinda Carlisle, her out of Altered Images, Billie Piper, Rihanna, Beyonce, Nina from the Cardigans, Kim Wilde circa 1981, Avril Lavigne (as long as she didn’t bring any of her fucking dreadful records) or Shakira.

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There we go! That explains it all then! Below is the fantastic track ‘men with beards (what are they hiding?) from their new album:

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Links

Kunt and the Gang myspace

Official site

(By ‘New’ I mean discovered, so no smart-arse comments about having seen them 17 times and owning 20 of their albums.)

Okay, as I am at a loss at what to post and there are a couple of reviews that are sitting on the backburner at the moment, so I’m going to talk about a few bands I’ve discovered recently that I think people should know about. Needless to say, they’ve probably been covered to death on other blogs/sites/winged monkeys, but I don’t care. Read:

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Tubelord

Whether they are in control of London’s underground train system remains a mystery. After several people badgered on and on about these guys on a certain message board I frequent, I decided to give Tubelord a listen. I was suitably impressed. A 3 piece from Kingston, who make jangling, noisy pop-rock that twists and contorts itself like a hand spasm on a Parkinson’s victim. There is definitely a touch of At The Drive-In’s pent up aggression, especially in the disjointed, ‘Half Man, Half Amazing.’ Seek them out, especially if you have Attention Deficit Disorder and enjoy dancing like a complete burke.

Tubelord currently have a 7″ single out (now sold out, but you can by it digitally from iTunes!) on Big Scary Monsters records called ‘Feed Me A Box Of Words.’

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Fang Island

I suggest you start listening to this straight away. Go on, click on the link above and just listen. Right, now if you don’t know anything about Fang Island be prepared for a shock. This band features one of the guys from minute-long grindcore monsters, Daughters. Yes, really. It kind of reminds me of Oxes, but less sporadic and pompous, with a lot more gusto, vitality and nice choppy chords. Just listen to ‘The Landing’ and tell me the guitar parts aren’t fucking incredible; immensely twiddly and vibrant. A lovely bit of unpretentious math-rock.

(Fang Island are currently without label, but their CD ‘Day Of The Great Leap’ can be bought from their myspace for $8.)

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Algernon Cadwallader

If you’re a fan of tappy guitars, delirious screams and jazzy flourishes then Algernon Cadwallader are right up your street. Making the same kind of racket those emo-pioneers Cap’n Jazz pedalled in their brief existence, the Cadwallader’s are a riot of choppy rhythms and shrieks. Their sound almost crosses boundaries into Weezer territory, in that it retains a permanent ‘sunny disposition’ even though their song titles (‘Serial Killer Status’) reflect otherwise. An intriguing prospect, if a little scatter-brained.

(You can buy their album ‘Some Kind of Cadwallader‘ from their myspace for $7.)

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Dead Swans

With the huge influx of hardcore bands nowadays, it’s easy to assume and group them all together as ‘shite.’ However, sometimes the odd one slips through that sounds pretty good. Take Dead Swans for example; an extremely pissed of 5 piece from “daaarrn saaarf” who seem to be channelling a mix of The Hope Conspiracy meets This Is Hell. There is a slight lingering feel of Bridge 9 Records about them, but luckily their pummelling rage deadens this. The cocky guitar solo at the end of ‘Preferring the Worst’ shows that they perhaps don’t want to be taken too seriously. Intimidating, noisy and hella good.

Their debut EP ‘Southern Blue‘ can be bought from the links on their label myspace page.

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Throats

Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t this. Throats, a hate-fuelled 5 piece from London seem content to act like big guy at your school who would deck anyone that looked at him in a funny way. Under the definition of ‘brutal’ in the dictionary should be their myspace page. A darn-sight more metal than Trigger The Smegging Blood Shed and just as horrific as being sat on by Vanessa Feltz. A catastrophic, discordant barrage of raw metallic rock. You remember that band Curl Up And Die? Here’s a better, faster more dangerous version. Tune in and prepare to have your face ripped off.

Throats are to release a split Ep with label mates Maths on Holy Roar Records as well as tour with the aforementioned screamo mob and support Johnny Truant on part of their July tour.

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Links

See above, I’m off to play Doom - hell yeah!

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By Ross Macdonald

(I know this is a bit late, but meh.)

Rejoice! Those of you who favour Eastpack resistance backpacks, flannel shirts and black thick-rimmed glasses and bands like The Promise Ring (“proper emo”) then you’ll be pleased to hear that Rival Schools have reformed! Led by ‘I’ve been in lots of good bands’ frontman, Walter Schreifels, the emo/post-hardcore supergroup will be visiting our fair shores this year for several live dates, which run as follows:

June Tour!

11 London King’s College (very nice place, has upstairs toilets)
13 Donington Download Festival (LOL)
17 Birmingham Academy II
18 Leeds Cockpit
19 Glasgow King Tut’s
20 London Radio One Rock Show Session at Maida Vale
21 Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms

They are also expected to release a new album sometime this year, details to be confirmed sometime in the future. After the band split in 2003, a second album was rumoured to be circulating the information super-highway and was at one point available from Schreifels’ website. Although, it is thought to have been a b-sides compilation. Those unfamiliar with the work of Schreifels should note that he played in 80s New York hardcore bands, Youth of Today and Gorilla Biscuits as well as emo-types, Quicksand.

Also, I’ve decided they do sound a little like Bush, but y’know…. a good version of Bush.

*Awaits being stoned to death by die-hard Rival Schools fans*

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Video

Here’s a video of Rival Schools playing ‘Used For Glue.’ Proper good.

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Links

Rivals Schools last.fm
Wiki Page
United By Walter (fan site)
Record Label