The Covids – Bust To Bits

By RingMaster Review on March 28, 2023 • ( 0 )

There are few to almost no good things to come out of the pandemic and its lockdowns a couple years back but one bright moment was the birth of THE COVIDS. A band “created out of boredom during the first lockdown”, the Amsterdam based outfit is a punk rock stomp upon the senses and, with the release of their debut album, a proposition surely about to take the feral rock world by the scuff of its neck.

With gig cancellations coming with growing regularity due to the pandemic regulations, THE COVIDS eventually made their live debut in the fall of 2021 but soon were storming and relentlessly playing the Dutch club circuit and breaking out further afield into the likes of the UK and Germany. This year the band has planned tours of the USA, Mexico, France and Spain scheduled and Bust To Bits is sure to entice the attendance of excited new fans.

THE COVIDS sound is a rapacious fusion of punk rock attack with garage rock instincts, an ESCOBAR meets BUZZCOCKS like proposal embracing inspirations from the latter of the two with that of bands such as THE DAMNED and THE WIPERS. As Bust To Bits quickly and ferociously proves it is also one with bold and belligerent individuality in character and breath and surging with fun.

Epitome starts the album off, a guitar gently almost teasingly flaming across the senses before the song erupts in a wild and rapacious trespass. It is a glorious clamour with melodic hooks, harmony kilned vocals and gang uproars. Virulently infectious and raucously involving, it proved an increasingly addictive start which the album’s title-track more than cements.

A flurry of beats send Bust to Bits surging through ears, riffs and vocal again bearing an almost pugilistic intent to their urgency and creative cunning, an infestation soon backed up in hooks and rhythmic incitement. Momentary calms only add to the prowess of song and enterprise, the track revelling in its unpredictability before Night Tight gathers steam to eventually uncage its own wild rock instincts and seventies power pop sensibilities.

As its predecessors, the song was soon burrowing under the skin to be instantly joined by Certified (Do it) with its contagion loaded clamour and in turn Get Up through its punk ‘n’ roll predation. Both tracks were as manipulative as they were creatively compulsive, the first of the pair bearing an organic almost spontaneous air which meant surprises came thick and fast while the second courted essences of bands like THE DAMNED, VIBRATORS and EDDIE AND THE HOT RODS in its untamed but cunning roar.

Spice ran through ears in top gear, a surging attack of garage punk with a boisterous clang to its unbroken spirit while Jenny’s Side upon unescapable rhythmic incitement cast its own garage rock ‘n’ roll dexterity with power pop mischief. Though a track maybe less voracious than its companions, it is another which sunk deep and had bodies and vocal chords bursting with undomesticated energy, an energy finding the same eagerness for Light a Match (Farmboy). It begins with an almost post punk nurtured lure but is soon romping through ears with involvement goading enterprise across a body of sonic enticement and punk rock devilment.

The fiery antics of Gone had inhibitions just as loose in their resistance, its devious hooks and addiction rummaging rhythms irresistible as the track cast a spell of enterprise and manipulation with enslavement soon held and quickly pounced upon by Downstairs with its own rhythmic devilry and sonic mastery. Again guitars created webs of sound barbed in the keenest hooks any greed could want and more than matched by nagging riffs, rhythmic interference and the rich incitement of vocals.

Drink ‘n Thrive completes the release, a track slowly rising to its feet through a psych punk haze but another that was instantly enthralling as it involved ears and imagination. By the second it gathers its invention and energy to subsequently spring into a hungry canter of sound and urgency but never abandoning its psychedelic intimations.

And that is Bust To Bits, one of the year’s major highlights so far from a band we are already stalking with anticipation and the urge of addiction.

Bust To Bits is out now via WAP SHOO WAP RECORDS; available digitally and on Ltd Ed 12” vinyl (300) @ https://wapshoowaprecords.bandcamp.com/album/bust-to-bits-album and https://wapshoowaprecords.bigcartel.com/product/the-covids-bust-to-bits-album