Hello Enemy – Hello Enemy (reviewed by Dave Franklin

The ’90s are remembered for two musical movements. In the UK, Brit-pop took the burgeoning indie sound and turned it into a fashion-driven, essentially, style over substance, lads club. In the US, grunge sidestepped out of mainstream rock and provided a natural alternative. It is hardly surprising that one, the former, was destined to burn itself out before it had begun in a blaze of hubris and self-worship, whereas the effect of the latter can still be felt in today’s music.

And if grunge felt like an alternative to the mainstream posturing that had been a core principle of rock music in the previous decade, what it stood for then – a back-to-basics, substance-over-style, honest return to rock roots – it seems that those same principles are again under attack from cooler-than-thou indie kids with complicated hair, insipid popsters and rock bands who have forgotten the meaning of melody.

Thank god for bands like Hello Enemy, who have taken some of that grunge ethic, more recent alternative vibes, and the spirit of early rock and roll and blended them into a new sonic onslaught. Their eponymous album is an excellent collection of tracks, seven deadly songs destined to reignite the true spirit of rock.

The More You Know, the opening salvo, plays with a wonderful on/off, stop/go, staccato riff before blowing things right open with a searing guitar solo. At this point, you stop and think to yourself, the future of alternative music is in safe hands.

Through the Flame is a collection of abrasive, razor-wire guitars and thunderous drums; Defined is a slow yet heavy, swaggering epic, the sort of thing that Pearl Jam would have wrestled you to the ground to get their hands on back in the day and They Think barges its way into punk territory, all unbridled energy and kick arse beats.

The ep rounds off with Stain, and it is the band’s walls of noise and tumultuous back beats, pounding bass lines and squalling riffs, their use of dynamics and changes of pace, their ability to mix muscle with melody, to add grit to groove, that tells you one important thing. That is, the future of rock, well alternative rock at least, music is assured. How do I know? Because I have just experienced one of the most consummate rock debuts I have heard in a long time, that’s how.