Do cigarette machines still exist? They certainly seem to have disappeared from pubs and train stations in the years since the ban on smoking in public places in the UK, and with e-cigarettes or ‘vaping’ having taken off in a big way and the majority of remaining tobacco smoker seemingly preferring to roll their own on account of the insane price of a pack of fags, it’s perhaps not surprising dispensing machines have been carted away, deemed no longer profitable.
So there’s a whiff of nostalgia as well as stale smoke around this EP from Memphis punks Ex-Cult. Musically, this six-tracker is also suitably retro. This is old-school, unreconstituted punk. With most dons clocking it a under three minutes, there’s no posing, just fast and furious, four-chord thuds or disaffection and disillusionment. The production is pure 1978, too. But they’ve got it nailed: the nihilism, the fuck-you sneer, the urgency and aggression.
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There’s nothing fussy or extravagant here: no flourishes, no guitar heroics, just a pissed-off guitar-driven punch in the face. Part Stooges, Part Dead Boys, spattered in phlegm and reeking of stale sweat, sincere and antisocial, this is punk the way it was, and the way it should be.
Ex-Cult Online
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