CHERUBS Vinyl & CDs

Review: Once hailed by Pitchfork as "the noisiest pop music on the planet", Texan group Cherubs, with Immaculada High, continue their second wave after returning from a two-decade hiatus in 2014. It sees the three piece land on American metal and experimental label Relapse Records - think Mastodon and The Dillinger Escape Plan - with an album that brings a fresh, even a previously thought-lost '90s ethic back to alternative, distorted and noisy metal. This record is no final farewell type gig, with the essence and rawness of tracks like "Sooey Pig" and "Full Regalia" in all its anti-Americana charm shining through as something new. With the Texas-sized, psychedelic racket of Cherubs recorded and engineered by Erik Wofford (Explosions In The Sky, The Black Angels) an undeniable trippy element to the band's punk ethos wilfully resonates throughout, most distinctly in Kevin Whitley's LSD-laced vocals that add a warm colour to a wonderfully muddy mix of lo-fi, distorted post-rock. Get dirty.