mvm.

When More! More! More! was released by a fairly unknown and underground outfit in the height of 2020 lockdown, we knew something was afoot within the seedy underbelly of Glasgow.

Welcome to the world below

a place where your ego fits

when you’re in need of extra milk

you just suck it from the tit.

Unrelenting, raw and packed with energy, Baby Strange – who share their name with a 1972 T Rex track – are a seemless transition between the beauty and the melancholic of gloomy post-punk rock. From unearthly collaborations with punkists Lauren Vincent of Slaves for Club Sabbath to the equivocal EP release of Land of Nothing, another marking was etched for another punk anthem etiquette for their follow-up from Want It Need It in 2016.

Instead, we got Midnight. The first glimpse at the new darkening age of Baby Strange – and the last chapter spoken on the full-length album that came out in the midst of June earlier this year. It is a cathartic kick up up the backside of sidled punk rock right now that is dry and fragmented within a genre that has many avenues unsure of where it’s really going. Baby Strange are here with a sturdy directional crash course keeping it ferocious, hardened and albeit catchy all the while tackling day-to-day struggles that is certainly not uncommon to hear in your typical post-apocalyptic punk album in today’s age. Bad Nerves meets an inane Kaiser Chief’s own Ricky Wilson in a mad world, World Below is a place – our place, on tape – and makes for such a tantalising listen.

Johnny Madden, Connaire McCann and Aidan McCann

From choral opener burning down an arts school to falling aghast into ravished Only Feel It When I’m With You, a bleak temperament of emotion, settling into pure rock antics with I Feel So Cold But It’s Warm Outside, filtering into blurry finisher Midnight, the album has a rhythm to it that keeps you precariously on the edge, just enough to prevent you from tipping altogether. Alas, let’s not forget those songs in-between, either, equally enthralling in songwriting. Under The Surface, Poor Old Me, Higher.

As the day becomes the night, grab your best, have a glass and let those bad thoughts creep in…