The utopian messiness of 1990s dance music culture is now so far back in time that what remains, for those under 40, is an idea, a meta myth. It is one that ALT BLK ERA embrace. Where the Nineties was a smorgasbord of futurism, vanguard electronic exploration and hedonic madness, the excellently titled debut album Rave Immortal reimagines it through the prism of catchy TikTok snippets and rampant rock punch. The result is not, perhaps, the intended, explosive Prodigy-play-Download riot, but buzzy ebullient pop.
Nottingham sisters Nyrobi and Chaya Beckett-Messam, who are both teenage or nigh-on, make music that, loosely speaking, sits somewhere between Rudimental’s pop drum & bass and early Paramore, with a dash of Bring Me The Horizon. Which is to say that they’re on the metal spectrum, as one would expect, since they’re on their hometown’s venerable extreme rock label, Earache. Mostly, though, with their extrovert image and sassy lyrics, they are purveyors of hard-edged bubblegum.
Rave Immortal has a bunch of highlights, including the fab chewing gum electro-punk of “My Drummer’s Girlfriend”, which has the great opening line, “She’s snorting cocaine every other weekend/She’s probably insane, she’s my drummer’s girlfriend”; the “Gaga-“Poker Face”-esque “Hunt You Down”, the goth-industrial slowie “Catch Me if You Can”, the Knife Party-like banger “Upstairs Neighbours”, and the two party invasion tunes “Crashing Parties” and its sequel, the nursery rhyme sing-along “Run Rabbit”.
ALT BLK ERA might have aided their cause by replacing a couple of lesser songs with other recent-ish singles, such as “I’m Normally Like This” and their collaboration with Brat-punker Delilah Bon, “Witch”, but, as it is, this still a snappy, enjoyable debut album that fizzes with a very contemporary kind of energy.
Below: Watch the video for "My Drummer's Girlfriend" by ALT BLK ERA
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