Liverpool’s This Is War return this Friday with their new EP ‘Rotten’. Recorded at Faktory Studios with The Verve’s Si Jones behind the mixing desk, it will be released via Bubblebrain Records. banner image courtesy of Chloe Randall.
Artwork courtesy of The Songbird HQ
2022 was a great journey for This Is War and their fans alike. A single every month, a year-long advent calendar of fine rock music. From ‘Autumn Savage Rose’ to ‘Weekend’, consistent outsider rock anthems were delivered. If this was all they ever made, it would stand proud and long in record collections. Arguably the hardest-working band in the UK, there would always be more! Can the EP stack up to last year’s quality?
Bridging the 2022 run of singles to the EP is the title track ‘Rotten’. The punk guitars of The Clash and The Pistols come out fighting before, This Is War’s innate ability to find something euphoric in a moment of abrasion emerges once more.
Last December saw the band support Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrel in their home city. Time well spent as Razorlight’s early flourish of greatness surfaces on ‘No Pressure’ and ‘Waves’. The sharp biting licks of ‘Up All Night’ are reimagined for This Is War’s indomitable stomp. The poetic hope of ‘Vice’ and the jagged glory of ‘To The Sea’ are reborn via Johnny Roberts hope filled guitars. ‘Waves’ at times, trips along with the joy of ‘In The Morning’ but continuously fades into something more despairing. There could be no better no sonic to light up the lives of working-class people in times of hardship. No matter how hard we try, there’s always another bill fucking you over! Despite this reflection, ‘Waves’ is also blessed great ambition in the closing stages. It brings the power of U2’s ‘War’ through to 2023 with aggression that demands your respect.
When BRMC made ‘Howl’, something in the rock ‘n’ roll cosmos aligned, the acoustic guitars which seemed so ill-befitting on paper became their natural domain without them losing any outsider credentials. On ‘Promised Land’, This Is War treads a similar path. The acoustic guitars have found a place between Penny Lane and The La’s and shimmer like a memory of The Roses at their peak. Frontman Paul Carden’s vocals are so often a venomous punk rock weapon for people to unite behind a mesmeric. So many frontmen would just soften the delivery, Carden retains his Dylan-esque power but couples it with a pearl of forlorn wisdom to conjure images of Ronnie Lane and Ronnie Wood telling their younger selves what they know now.
This is a huge step up in quality for This Is War. Their talent as musicians have gelled with their penchant for punk and rock anthems to produce timeless music. 2022 was a good year for the band by anyone’s standards. The step up in class is perhaps best personified by the acoustic version of last year’s ‘Mona Lisa’. What was gritty and fiery melts into a George Martin-produced classic with Mick Head on guitars.
This is War will playing the Kick Out The Jams stage at the Brighton Mix Up (free entry) next month:
