Downers – Noose

With fuzzy gained up guitars and strangely soothing vocals over the top, Downers’ new EP Noose takes us on a trip right back to the roots of grunge music. The 3 track EP consists of heavy guitars blasting power chords right down your throat during instrumental breaks, whilst giving generally stripped back verses consisting of calming vocals, straight drum beats and eerie clean/reverberated guitars.

With fuzzy gained up guitars and strangely soothing vocals over the top, Downers’ new EP Noose takes us on a trip right back to the roots of grunge music. The 3 track EP consists of heavy guitars blasting power chords right down your throat during instrumental breaks, whilst giving generally stripped back verses consisting of calming vocals, straight drum beats and eerie clean/reverberated guitars.

Across three tracks, Noose is in your face with the fuzz and back to the old school grunge sound, yet seemingly enthused with an Alternative Rock sound too. Opener Erased is a fantastic way to kick off the EP, calming and soothing vocals and verses, whilst attacking and invigorating in the instrumentals. The backbone of the track is in the opening instrumental-pre-verse, for me it throws the track out there and really wakes you up and to make Erased a great track it has a fantastically catchy chorus and sing along outro. Moving on, Graze follows in the might of Erased with a powerful intro to kick the song to life, but the verse shows great variation between the 1st and 2nd as we see gained up guitars ringing out in the first verse and in the second Downers show great writing style with the silenced and punchy variation. Lastly Grown Out, this track follows similar principles to the other two tracks, but is still a world apart from them in a way.

Downers could potentially look at showing more of a variation in the dynamics of vocals with more grit and attack in areas. But other than that I cannot really flaw this EP it’s infectious and memorable, I’ve listened to it for the last 2 hours straight and could go on for much longer. Noose will be available from August 1st, through LocalColour Records, and I would strongly suggest purchasing a copy as it comes as a 7″ vinyl and also a digital code for download. BUY IT!

Ellis Perryman

July 25, 2015

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