James and the Cold Gun – False Start

By RingMaster Review on June 7, 2022 • ( 0 )

Like an attention demanding slap around the face, Flash Start is the debut EP from Welsh outfit JAMES AND THE COLD GUN, a collection of tracks which roars ‘Take us or leave us but you can’t ignore us’.

Though the duo of guitarists/vocalists James Joseph and James Biss with their songs have already teased attention, including that of Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard whose label Loosegroove Records, co-owned with Regan Hagar (Malfunkshun, Brad, Satchel), are co-releasing the new EP, they have seriously raised the ante with False Start. It is a beast of alternative/punk rock crafted in traps of skin burying hooks and impassioned roars within a sonic cyclone; quite simply it is a rock ‘n’ roll tempest of feral pleasure.

The Cardiff band throws everything from energy and adrenaline to passion into an encounter which evoked the same in our immediate response to its call, EP opening Seven, from gently but firmly luring ears soon treating them to a fury of sound and intensity. Voraciously landing rhythms are a merciless incitement exploited by the riffs and sonic wiring of the guitars; the snarling grumble of bass especially lustfully seized. It is a hellacious beast of sound and enterprise further driven by the galvanic vocals the pair uncaged within one manipulative tempest.

Similarly Around The Bend has no appetite to hold back its trespass or encouragement on one’s rock ‘n’ roll instincts, the song snarling and throwing its self recklessly about whilst virulently getting under the skin and into one’s lustful participation. As with its predecessor, there was no escape from its galvanic might and cunning exploits with Plug Me In just as prosperous in igniting the passions for untamed rock and punk nurtured irritancy.

The final pair of It’s Mutual and Long Way Home are maybe less merciless in their invasion, the first bearing an infection spun pop punk catchiness with harmonic mischievousness which was soon tampered with by our own less refined tones. Equally its successor played relatively nice with its invasive inclinations yet there is no escaping a certain predatory to the duo’s sound no matter how it decides, with a keenly bracing quality, to confront.

Imagine something akin to a fusion of In The Whale, Foo Fighters and Moly Karloff and you get a whiff if not full sense of JAMES AND THE COLD GUN and the addiction forging False Start EP.

The False Start EP is out now via Venn Records and Loosegroove Records; available digitally and on Ltd Ed CD and June 2022 available Ltd 12” vinyl @ https://jamesandthecoldgun.bandcamp.com/album/false-start or through https://orcd.co/falsestartep