Let Our Enemies Beware

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
- Charles Bukowski
He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration in the belief that craftsmanship alone suffices will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.
- Plato
I only play for money I don't give a fuck about the fans
I only play for money I don't give a shit if you dance
- The Froggs
[I am Lono is] a prime example of the thunderous genius of their new EP "Look What You Made Me Do"... everything on it reminds you that guitar music can still be incendiary and thrilling.
- Stephen McCauley, Electric Mainline, BBC Radio Northern Ireland
We're so glad we checked this one out. This really is something exciting, I think. You know - we're looking for really exciting, really forward thinking visceral rock & roll and this band are delivering right now.
- Zane Lowe, BBC Radio One
Let Our Enemies beware are a brilliantly talented and fresh act that are sure to blow you away and leave a buzzing in your ears. Ignore them at your peril.
- Jonathan M, The Mag
Let’s skip straight to the end, shall we? Bypass the so-often-pointless comparisons to acts already operating in the sphere of mainstream rock and roll, to those whose work you’ll own already and thus remark, albeit silently, “Oh, well I do like them, so I must like these” (even though you know it never goes down like that), and plough on to the money shot, the precipice upon which this cliff-hanger was hung. Ready?
Let Our Enemies Beware are roughly eighteen leagues ahead of ninety percent of British rock bands out there, right now, this instant. Dhu Rakina doesn’t just prove this in a matter-of-fact manner; it crushes bone and pulps brain, stomps doubt and embraces insanity. It is neither metal nor punk, not post-rock or its hardcore cousin. It is rock music played by rock fans bearing wicked smiles and it makes me feel fucking brilliant. And now, the back story: Let Our Enemies Beware hail from the same Kentish soil as previous DiS-does-RoTa players Up-C Down-C, but whereas their friends ply a trade mastered by many – that of post-rock dynamics turned up and blown out – this group of musicians are in a pigeonhole entirely of their own. Sure, you’ll think there are hallmarks of many an already-encountered style, but Let Our Enemies Beware’s way with sound manipulation – their ability to contort regular compositions into hideous mutations, to crank their output to ‘epic’ and then crash it to Earth like a meteorite, shattering what was beautiful into a hundred flaming shards of deadly intent – is truly wonderful. ‘(Personal) Space Invaders’, for instance, begins with a skin-prickling rumble a la Mogwai and their ilk, but soon engages its superchargers and propels itself into bizarre-rock territory, all Patton scatting and twinkle-twinkle guitars. It hovers for a while before its 'chute is cut and the whole piece erupts into the listener’s ear canal. It sears like a bastard, but the sensation is so irrationally incandescent that one can’t help but rewind and do it all again.
‘I’m Not Laughing, I’m Choking’ is a similarly schizophrenic affair, all Mono-meets-Mastodon riffs building into a buzzing Botch-like finale. ‘Fools Philistines Heretics And Whores' treads equally uneven boards, a John Lydon snarl pulling the teeth out of a Faith No More covers band while a small child cries itself dry in the sin bin corner of the room. It pulses and grows and pops – “fuck you” the frank payoff line – before tripping over itself ‘til its nose is broken and its toes are all stubbed out. Over the course of seven tracks (at 37 minutes this is basically an album, not an EP) Let Our Enemies Beware run riot through record store racks, stealing what they can’t breed themselves and pouring fertiliser on their already wild imaginations. What’s more, they do it in a manner that implies that they’ve having fun, the time of their fucking lives, committing it all to tape. Dhu Rakina is malevolence and menace, intrigue and invention, bliss and bombast. It’s just about everything you want in a new band.
Of course, none of the above references really stick. That's the beauty of this release: it's both immediate in emotive effect, making the brain fizz like a suger rush, and alien in its construction. It is original in a fashion that the alleged mavericks in the music press, those that look simply to prog or folk to augment their otherwise MOR stylings, can only dream about. Refresh your memory and backtrack: Let Our Enemies Beware are roughly eighteen leagues ahead of ninety percent of British rock bands out there, right now, this instant. That’s actually selling this EP a little short; I’m under great restraint not to proclaim that this band is the best domestic rock act I’ve heard all year. That they’re unsigned is the biggest industry crime since that whole Jonathan King debacle. Someone with a little cash and the inclination, do us a favour and put this in those aforementioned racks.
- 9/10 Drowned In Sound (Mike Diver)
Post-rock-cum-something-core bunch Let Our Enemies Beware, [who] prove that, as long as there are guitars, there will be exciting british talent to abuse them.
- Rock Sound magazine, Eden Maine fairwell show at The Luminaire (Mike Kemp)
It takes guts to cross the river, to journey south into lands foreign to a body so familiar with the insides of North London dives that it practically bleeds Buffalo Bar paint when sliced by misfortune. Guts of steel, and a will of iron: see, Lewisham after dark is no place for the weak of heart, and the cowardly lions that roar so proudly when the situation suits. It’s a dark place, an alien place – a place you’re likely to spy and turn tail from without so much as tasting the air (fried chicken and rotting vegetables, since you asked).
But wait, be fair: not much of the above has much of an anchor in the realms of reality, or of honest-to-God truth (with the exception of lily-livered North Londoners fearing their southerly cousins’ neighbourhoods, that is); what is needed for the wandering stranger to venture south is a band, one that really matters. Every other night’s headliners over at Brixton’s cavernous Academy simply don’t cut it, be ‘it’ the mustard or whatever else you’d like to see parted (can one really cut mustard?); no, no – what’s needed is fresh blood, ready to spill out over territory assumed hostile prior to arrival. Tonight, at the back of a well-attended Lewisham boozer, Let Our Enemies Beware are such a band. They’ve blood aplenty, circulating close to the surface, a pinprick away from being shed; their music is immense, every way capable of having the crowd at the aforementioned shrine to poor lager feel weak at the knees in awe.
Tonight is the band’s first London show; indeed, if what we (I) hear is correct, it’s their first ever show beyond their home turf of Chatham. Many of the fresh-faced rock kids in the crowd are here to cheer on mates – LOEB open a bill of three, the two acts above them borrowing rather too heavily from established acts to the point where cliché doesn’t come close, however accomplished they may be – but even punters with the very lowest expectations for the Medway four-piece are soon convinced to edge forward. Closer and closer they step, beers in hand, to the action happening both on stage and off it: guitarist ‘Unkle B’ (or James to his mum) is forced to stand before the corridor to the toilets, his pedals simply too many to be accommodated by the tiny stage. (Well, it’s not that tiny really – LOEB’s drumkit, though, is fairly large.) A shout comes from behind me: “You’re amazing!” It’s unclear whether the gentleman from whence it comes is friend or just another person sucked in by the mighty sounds now reverberating wildly about the room, but he’s spot on the money opinion wise.
The band’s set is taken entirely from their last (self-released) EP, Dhü Rakina; the highlights are many and varied, the music something like an unholy amalgamation of Mr Bungle, Mogwai and Muse. A guy in a Deftones top – who later emerges as the singer of the second band – goes positively ape shit, his girlfriend tugging at his pants, urging him to sit back down and stop showing her up. His face tells a story no words could ever convey – this is something really special, an act that does matter; a band of brothers in full flight, unafraid of where they’re headed and going the most roundabout way possible to get there. Every subtle intricacy is balanced by the kind of brutality no pub was ever designed for, that no arena could possibly stomach. Here they build a wall of distorted sound that pierces the eardrums like a spear through a Victoria sponge; there they shed the post-rock postures and adopt a violent hardcore stance, second guitarist (LOEB have no need for a bassist) Adam Elwin taking over vocal duties from the flexible larynx of regular screamer Shareef Dahroug (who charms the crowd between songs with ease). When they reach their peaks, the views are sensational; the tingle down the spine – the one that runs from the very base of your skull to the ends of your tiniest toes – is simply exquisite and lingers for no little while. The skin feels electric, the senses dance with delight.
‘I’m Not Laughing, I’m Choking’ is a frenzied post-cum-punk rocker that somehow straddles around eight sub-genres with only two legs, equal parts disharmony and discordance, hypnotic throughout. The band’s trump card tonight though is ‘(Personal) Space Invaders’, a song so massive it could be used to bring expired council estate buildings crashing to terra firma from around five miles away, saving on both fuses and explosives, not to mention the obligatory cartoon-style plunger. Describing LOEB’s songs in simple, comparative terms is no easy feat – the references to other acts above are but convenient hooks on which to hang something that really suits nothing in fashion today, or tomorrow – so I’m left at your mercy, really. Don’t hate me for saying that you really have to see LOEB to understand my cat-caught tongue; really, you do have to.
Leaving Lewisham seems that little bit harder come the band’s set closer, a stirring eight minutes of malice and malevolence delivered when they were meant to play for just four. The river crossing, too, loses its relevance – the north-south divide only exists to dissuade fussy northern fools from ever seeing bands of substance and soul, I’m sure of it.
Still, they’ll be better, ten-fold, as and when they too step across one of the many Thames bridges and into a much, much bigger playing field. Today, Lewisham is conquered; tomorrow, who knows what other boroughs will fall victim to LOEB’s multi-faceted charms? Right now, few other bands at an unsigned level matter so much.
- 9/10 Drowned In Sound, The Fox & Firkin, Lewisham (Mike Diver)
As this Kent quartet begins to play, we notice their glorious shards of rock have enraptured half the crowd while the rest are left to bemoan "another post-rock band". Led by a zealous half-Egyptian frontman, they blend the dynamics of Mogwai with the exhilaration factor of Faith No More, winning over the doubters with their interesting grooves and chaotic demeanour
- The Fly magazine, The Tatty Bogle, Soho(Raziq Rauf)
Rakina...She go bye bye
Thank you motherfuckers for all yr. inquiries about a re-pressing of Dhu Rakina, we sold out of this a long time ago and as of this moment we have no plans for another run. However a few choice tracks have made it from Rakina onto the final cut of our upcoming release...
If you have Rakina cherish it, half the band don't have original copies anymore