This one’s been sat on my pile since Wildfire (along with a couple of others), from a band who didn’t actually play at the festival. I just got chatting to one of the band as I heard him talking and felt homesick. Being a clever band member, the nice Geordie fellow had a pocketful of CDs they were handing out and I snaffled one for a later listen.
The band are Newcastle-based and seem to be doing well for themselves in of gigs. I can understand why, mainly from the rockier numbers on this seven-track album. I’d label them “garage rock” and let me explain why – the EP has a rough, ragged edge to it that makes it sound a little like it was recorded in a garage. Now this is not a bad thing. It sounds live rather than over-produced and reminds me of stuff I used to hear walking to the shops with my parents when I was a nipper.
Older denizens of the Toon and surrounds may understand the following… we’d park at Manors car park and walk up towards Pilgrim Street. Part of this walk was along a back alley, I think round the rear of Worswick Street back when it was still the bus station. I just checked Google Maps and the lane isn’t there any more – looks like it’s now a car park. Anyway, almost every week as we walked along it, there’d be loud, angry rock coming from a garage as a band practiced.
Release the Hounds reminds me of that. Gritty, oily, dirty – the signs of hard graft. Not perfect and it knows it but doesn’t care. Hell, it revels in it. Like Newcastle. Yeah, you could say I’m taken by this little collection.
Certainly the likes of “I Can’t Hide” with its belting rhythm and shredding solos should get any rocker’s head bouncing back and forth. I can only imagine it being that bit more emotive in a live setting. “Good Love Calling” similarly bounces along and has a cracking chorus that begs you to scream along to it with a fist in the air. Singer Bryan McGill’s vocals on “Hooked on Love” really emphasises his North East accent, alongside the crashing rhythm section and crunching guitars.
Although it doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the album, slow ballad “So Blue” isn’t bad. It’s just out of place. I suppose it could have been a power ballad which would have just been wrong for this bunch of lads, but I dunno… it just jars a bit being sat in between other rockier numbers. Nice to show their softer chops, but I much prefer the more upbeat stuff.
The closing track goes by the moniker “The Trilogy”, and is broken down into three parts in the CD inlay if not on the CD itself. At first the thirteen minute running length looks very… prog rock, until you realise it’s essentially three different songs which run as a themed collection, almost a medley. The first, “Feeling Sad”, is another slow number but more bluesy (funnily enough) than “So Blue”. With the prominent bass, it reminds me a little of The Police which is no bad thing.
Through the four and five minutes mark, it begins to segue into “Going Home” as the distorted guitar crashes in. As the album reaches a close, the noisy, punky “Pure Filth” wrecks your speakers – the kind of track you’d finish a gig on with the crowd going mental.
So, yeah. Despite its wonderful imperfections (or because of them) I’m rather taken by Release the Hounds, and indeed The Filth Hounds themselves. Check out their social links below and see if they’re playing near you sometime. Looking at facebook I think they’ll be on stage somewhere as I’m writing this!
Header photo courtesy of Keith Talbot of KT Band Photography
The Filth Hounds: facebook | twitter | myspace | reverbnation
