Dark, nasty and charged, with a distinct whiff of Nirvana circa "Bleach", "Pure" is by some way the best thing this writer has yet heard from East London's RED.STAR.LINE: certainly way better than the rather clueless "Centerville"EP he caught previously.
This, though, grabs you by the lapels and gives you a good, old-fashioned shaking. It's bitten off of riff, malevolent of rhythm, grainy and nicotine-stained of vocal and all-round crunchy and no-nonsense guitar rock. And no, it's not horribly original either, but it jealously hoards reserves or power and wins through comfortably enough, not least thanks to the last-ditch desperation of singerTim Crosby clutching at metaphorical straws as he gasps through that "Can I have you? Won't you take me home?" chorus.
Double-A is the wonderfully-titled "Rewards For Informers" and it's suitably damning of the Pete'n'Kate-style celeb culture we're all being systematically saturated with these days. "Learn your lines and just repeat - again!" spits a sneery, uncompromising Crosby as the band vent some spleen with a second sonic blast of some repute that really does echo The Cult's "She Sells Sanctuary." Which - curiously - seems to make some arcane sort of sense in this context.
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Not bad at all, and for simply sounding NOTHING like most of the interchangeable East End spiv-urchins cluttering the Whitechapel Road, RED.STAR.LINE get my vote. Keep at it lads.
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