mvm.

A desperate attempt to finding connection in an otherwise impossible world, is a marking this Brighton quartet wear well.

A decadent cult-rising from their self-titled debut with, I Only Hurt The Ones I Love to the breakthrough lashing of I Like The Way You Die on second, Written & Directed, comes the bands’ third; an engaged, self-aware fizz of a band who know exactly what they’re doing. It comes with less a distorted overview of a world that needs fixing compared to its angry counterpart on W&D – but holds up with its fuzzy guitars, percussive blitz and of course, Izzy’s firebrand vocals leading life’s outliers away from the gutters.

Wolf Alice’s streaky-eyeliner problem-child are back – and it’s Beautifully Unconventional in any sense of the word.

A detaining worthy for the most insane, lead Charlie Bronson seems to be the last whiff of borderline hard-rock that we saw W&D, as it stutters and staggers into Heavy, an equally catchy win in terms of indie landfill but doesn’t land half of the hard knockouts from the two albums prior. Up Against It is Izzy’s Good Will Hunting therapy talk to the front row, fully embracing the bands’ message of acceptance; “so we quit the fight and we sing like / Give yourself a break, kid / You were up against it, don’t you know / The odds weren’t in your favour, it was just bad behaviour,” while Out of My Mind is a fervent reminder to us that while Izzy is our dedicated second-in-command, turn up my song loud, my girl, she possesses her own inward problems – “all I wanna do is just get out of my, out of my mind / All I wanna do is just keep wasting, I’m wasting my time.” A true baring of souls for a fierce comrade to the women of rock.

Cut The Cord is a dissociative feeling of letting your keenly-spirited self go; along with those who you associate with as your closest, while OK seems to be the apparent fallout of such a conversation we’d expect, “I’m keeping it a secret for ya / You push it down and medicate it now / What if we died tomorrow? / We couldn’t take it back, We made a mistake / Playing the game that we play / Is this a war or heartache? / Taking control..” A sepia-tinged engulfing of desolation, OK is a slice of this crusty rock ‘n roll at their best.

It seems that OK was the final after-thought before we’re dowsed in a dissection of dark memoirs. We’re not listening to an indie-rock record anymore.Taking an impulsive direction, I’m A Man is a strong take on consent but it’s ultimately written from the perspective of somebody who sexually assaults people, “like a real man, a toupee and a tan / with a face like a thumb / and a spine like a sponge, sucking out that fun. Nobody Knows and Weirdos offer up more of the same; almost a reflection of when us as outliers are wrapped up in our minds, not fitting anywhere even if we tried.

The stomp-rock outro of Tombstone and Bummer are very much fistfuls of peaches, keeping true to their word. The last two are songs you’d see the lads down the road do; if Royal Blood didn’t divert into a shade of too much disco-rock on their feature-length third.

A Black Honey album that has never had so much heart, truth and honesty pumped into it, A Fistful of Peaches is an absolute truimph for the molten-rock fanatics that would follow them to the ends of Earth.