If you’ve never heard of Cherubs before it is probably because their new record 2 Ynfynyty (Brutal Panda) is the first piece of music they’ve released in just under twenty years. Their aggressive brand of Noise Rock allowed them to build quite a cult following and their fans will be delighted to hear that none of that quality has been lost in all that time. Despite having a highly irritating album title to continuously type out; Cherubs have produced a record which is thoroughly engaging from start to finish. The band transition so seamlessly between heavier slower, Doom fuelled tracks to a blistering Punk rush of chaos, and to such a high standard, you’re left wondering what the hell took them so long to get down to writing some new music. You listen to this closely with their previous albums and it is clear that they have not really missed a beat.
Opening track ‘Sandy On The Beach’ immediately sets the tone of the piece with an addictive riff right at its core. There will be a lot of people picking this album up who have never been exposed to the band before, so if you’re a fan of Desert scene bands with a bit of Punk aggression injected in the blood then you’ll get on with this album very well indeed. There are a couple of tracks in particular which epitomise that description; So ‘Jellified’ will smash your ear drums with some ridiculous sized riffs, whilst ‘Crashing The Ride’ is a minute and a half of pure bedlam.
Perhaps quite a clear drawback on this record is its poor production. It is not absolutely clear whether the rough sounding production was something the band were particularly going for, but if so then it doesn’t really work. The drumming in particular suffers under the mix.
Overall though, it would be poor to disregard this album due to some bad sounding production. As noted, the quality of the tracks from start to finish is high, and if anything 2 Ynfynyty will no doubt win this band some new fans. It will be interesting to see some of these songs live as well when the band no doubt hit the road soon. If you look to purchase this album on their website as well, you’ll be amused to find that one of the formats you can buy it on is cassette tape – they’ve clearly still got their 1996 hats on.
7.5/10
TOM DONNO