Dear Toronto Blessings, I’m sorry this is late. I did promise to get this up sooner…

So now I write to give you some thanks, for the blistering Bad For Lazarus / 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster heat that pummels through the single that you’ve just released. It’s a brawl-heavy track that’s a kick to the jowl, it’s a raw slap of sidewalk trash squalor. As feedback permeates every ripped nylon riff, and as drums get their sounds beaten out of them, the sucker-punk anger and intellipunk grit makes this track almost dangerously addictive. Hope you saw it was on last month’s playlist.

There’s a cool burnt and blistered call and response that belongs to the scream and cut vocals. And I do hate to keep throwing in 2010s namedrops, but there’s that first album Nine Black Alps grunge. I might be as excited as I was when I saw them back at their first release peak.

Having pleasured my ears to your back catalogue, I can hear that you only got meaner. The sounds and aggression have refined and got tighter, the width of the agro has ramped. If there’s ever a band that belonged on a stage in a low ceiling’d DIY sweat box, where the only separation between audience and you is a grey Duct Tape strip on the floor (and where mic stands swing black eyes at gig-goers), then I’m pretty much sure this is you. I better catch you before you up stage size.

And I hear you got an even newer release, it’s a time-line confusing affair. ‘Isolation Recordings’ was cut before ‘Life’ but got set loose on public last month. It’s cool to hear sounds as raw bones, there’s a slick pre-production postpunk nu-wave feel that it’s great to hear you all exploring. Between the single and EP, I hope this got you covered, I’ll write something that shows off them both.

So yes please to more and more soon. And make sure you keep us updated. I think I’d enjoy writing up next release and I’m more than sure we’ll keep on diggin’.

Keep angry and easy,
Love Rats on the Run.