Internal Massage

The latest in a lineage that takes in three-minute heroes like Buddy Holly, The Beach Boys, The Clash and Stravinsky, their “Non-Stop Bangers” EP contains tightly-packed fuzz-bombs of perfectly-formed punk’d up rock’n’roll. But this is no re-hash of old riffs. Internal Massage deal in future retro-ism – timeless melodies about love, life and loss delivered by men with one eye on distant alternative futures, and all glued together by an instinctive Ramones-esque brotherly bond. Splendidly-titled follow up EP “metaphosmose version 9” ups the ante, cranks up the tune quota and ejaculates technicolour sounds totally at odds with the grey world around it. Like Satan’s own High School prom band, these are all insurgent pop-flecked punk shockers, with angular shape-throwing and a deluge of hormonal anthems delivered with the precision of a frontline soldier. Hi-octane. Do or die. Mainlined straight to the heart. Not for nothing are they called Internal Massage – music doesn’t come any more direct or spikier. Finding nothing that meant anything in the current sounds, they turned to jelly for inspiration. There was something quite sinister about Gene Vincent but tender too. There was an ambiguity there. "Raw, exciting rock’n’roll made utter sense to us.” Live, they explode into action like a joke-shop tin of snakes springing forth.