Save Me –  Suburban Vermin (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

In such an interconnected age as today, I’m surprised more bands don’t realise that just making music is limiting your appeal and that the best approach is a multi-pronged media attack. Okay, many deliver their music with a video to create a pincer movement of audio and images but far too few put out their own comic book series, one where they are the characters and the music can be considered the sound track. That’s clever, very clever.

Save Me is Suburban Vermin doing what they do best, splicing rasping old-school punk with the pop-punk revivalists who followed a decade or so later, 60’s garage rock with the stripped down nu-punk of the here and now, into a best of all worlds musical scenario. It is short, sharp and to the point, pop aware and highly melodic, raw, ragged, punchy and jagged. Everything that the subversive strains of rock in all its forms has thrived on since the first rockers declared James Dean a deity and went into battle to win the heart, mind and disposable income of the newly designated teenager.

If there is a better garage rock band operating on the circuit today then I’m yet to stumble across them, they capture all the raw energy, swagger, verve and attitude of a small club band bursting out of their restrictive environment to take on the world. They are also a band who have worked out that the wheel doesn’t need re-inventing, it just needs a clean up, re-treading and some fancy rims added then taken out for a spin to leave some indelible and unsightly marks all over the road, possibly invoking an angry letter to the local newspaper from local residents. Buckle up; it is going to be one hell of a ride.