Singles + EPs

EP Review: Dolium

[Album: El Vampiro Attack!]
[Label: Parlour 9 / Cargo Records]

Is it just me or does the entity known as “punk” just not exist anymore? Yes, we know there are still scummy blokes with Mohawks blasting dog eared copies of ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ out of their 8-tracks, but where’s the music scene gone? One glance at the recent Leeds & Reading line ups will tell you that the modern suburbanite just doesn’t care anymore.

When punk exploded in the seventies it terrified parents throughout the land, but as time wore on bands such as Weezer and Green Day sugared the 3-chord pill for the masses and inadvertently paved the way for clean-cut pretenders like Sum 41 and Blink 182 to dilute the genre beyond all recognition. Hoping to stop the rot is Sheffield’s deathly dark duo Dolium.

Comprising of charismatic frontman Reece Adamo, bassist Ms De Vine and a drum machine called Laura, the band certainly tick all the right boxes. The DIY recordings, black horror aesthetic and trail of destruction are superseded only by the blistering music they produce. Adamo’s pained howling is marvellously juxtaposed with De Vine’s angelic backing vocals, giving each song a beautifully schizophrenic persona. ‘(She Can’t) Stake My Heart!’ sees Adamo battle his demons to a chorus of nonchalant “doo-oohs” from De Vine, whilst on ‘Coughin’ in the Coffin’ the singer’s antagonistic snarls are greeted with seductive “oo la la la las”. Elsewhere ‘Oh Lord, I See No Reflection’ struts a filthy groove whilst ‘You’ve Got Holes’ sees inexorable insanity shoehorned into 3 cantankerous minutes with a dirty crucifix. Ah, so this is what punk is!

Dirty, cheap, hostile and sarcastic, ‘El Vampiro Attack!’ is the sound of society crashing around us all over again. Rest assured that if the Four Horsemen decide to bring a ghettoblaster to the apocalypse then this is what they’ll be pumping out.

For Fans Of: The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Gallows

Band Link:
Dolium

Shop:
Amazon UK | Amazon US

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