Hands up if you saw Outcry Collective play The Hat Factory earlier in the year? Well, those with hands raised needn’t be told of the riotous cacophony of sound the Surrey quartet brings to the mix. For those with their bewildered hands somewhere around the hips, here’s the skinny: Outcry Collective plays rock music that encompasses hardcore punk, classic rock and the odd nasty little surprise. It’s brutal and it’s good.

Articles is the band’s debut album and as far as capturing that live content goes, it does the job extremely well. Full of massive riffs, beastly drums and a guttural vocal full of sheer-minded spite, it’s an absolute bruiser of a record. The comparison being thrown around at the moment is to The Bronx, which actually sounds about right. Take ‘Homecounty Killer’, a heavy punk ’n’ roll number that would happily sit alongside anything the L.A. outfit has put to shiny disc (well, except the mariachi record, I suppose).

‘Out of My System’ kick-starts the album with some Gallows-esque hardcore only distilled with that Southern rock flavour. It’s a pacy number full of fury but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. ‘Dead In the Water’ and ‘Moonlight’ add steaming water to the ant nest in terms of vocals, whilst some suspiciously Rage Against The Machine riffs make their presence felt (yes, I am comparing the guitars to Tom Morello). It’s a sound you can’t get away from as the record progresses.

Add to this some big bass and some fuzzy distorts and you get a sludgy sound that sounds dirty, plays dirty and is, quite simply, dirty. The fact that this record was recorded in a pigsty (seriously!) probably has a lot to do with that. Maybe the track ‘A Great Day for the Crows’ should have been renamed ‘A Bad Day for the Hogs’; this would have the little critters’ coiled tails in a spin.

If there’s a down moment on the record it’s ‘Prepare Yourself for the News’. It’s has an odd electro feel to it, almost like indie-rock. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with a band experimenting (we applaud that in these parts) this doesn’t really click. There’s also a sense that penultimate track, ‘Crystal Clear’, is the real closer here. It even has the big drum rolls and epic guitar signing off sound to it, and when ‘Clock House’ follows it seems a little misplaced. Still, for a debut that’s entirely self-recorded, self-produced, self-mastered, self-everything really, it’s far from detrimental to the album as a whole.

Articles proves to be an extremely solid record, and as far as debuts go, it’s outstanding. Outcry Collective is a band that’s ready to push the boundaries, to be creative and most of all, ramp it up all the way to the ear-crushing, mind-bending limits. Check this out, now!

http://www.myspace.com/outcrycollective

Articles is available now through Visible Noise Records.

Outcry Collective plays the UBSU Sub Club in Luton with Gay For Johnny Depp and Blakfish on Friday 27 November 2009