Album Review: Girls In Synthesis - "The Rest Is Distraction"
It's safe to say that The Rest Is Distraction has a bit of a hint of the last chance saloon about it. When Girls In Synthesis first raised their heads above water with 2020's Now Here's An Echo From Your Future, they seemed like one of the most vital new bands in Britain at the time. Mixing brutal post-punk jarring rhythms with a furiously nihilistic lyrical outlook, the world looked to be their oyster.
Two years on though, a lot has changed. Several of the group's politico-noise contemporaries have either stumbled and put out underwhelming follow-ups to their defining albums (Idles, Fontaines DC) or just never fulfilled the early potential they seemed to have (TV Priest). And with Girls In Synthesis themselves having put out a couple of EP's which were slightly disappointing, foregoing the pin missile anger of Now Here's An Echo... for lumbering experimentalism that tended to blunder off down blind alleys when it should've been going for the throat, the stakes are high here.
So it's a shock, and a pleasure, to report that somehow they've done it. The Rest Is Distraction feels like the real follow-up to Now Here's An Echo - furious, angry and with a dark disturbing psychosis that sounds ominous but you can't help but get drawn in by. It's there right from the moment they kick in with a killer one two three - the panic attack of It's All Beginning To Change, the childhood paranoia of Watch With Mother and the pure unbridled anger of Total Control. In fact, the to-the-pointness of this album is its main selling point - it's like GIS have reined themselves in and amped up the anger to produce something genuinely good from the frenzied domestic abuse ode of Cottage Industry to the sheer venom of Lacking Bite (definitely an inappropriately titled effort) and the furious "wake up, you're already dead!" venom of Your Prayers Have Changed. The panic-stricken closer To A Fault meanwhile sums this one up perfectly and signs it off in style. Make no mistake, this is an album that'll knock the air clean out of your lungs.
Overall thoughts? Quite honestly, this album shits on Crawler and Skinty Fia from a massive height and proves that there's plenty of life left in the angry noise-rock brigade. And on this evidence, I'd say that Girls In Synthesis are in good position to take over as that particular genre's figureheads. A proper stormer of an album.
NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)
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