“Both of us work jobs we hate to fund the thing we love”. Consuumer.
Now that’s a quote that most of us creative types can relate to Isn’t it? Whether it’s flipping burgers or pouring pints, we’re all in some way chained to our day jobs, distracted for 8 hours a day from what we really enjoy doing. Hereford-based duo Consuumer embody those very feelings of disdain for the dependence we have on our monotonous regimes. At night, Consuumer are different species, crawling from the sewers, wielding instruments like baseball bats. Their debut EP, Shattered Fruit is a messy contortion of doom rock that growls with slavering intensity.
Commencing with the primordial chugs of ‘Radio’ and its bending, distorted guitar wails, the listener is led on a path of total carnage. “DON’T FUCK WITH ME, I AIN’T DUMB!” scream the opener’s closing vocals, channelling Kurt Cobain and DFA 1979 in equal ferocity. The title track follows like an unexpected fist to the gut, punishing the eardrums with a knuckle duster of twanging modulated guitar lines and abrasive, brutish grunge chords. This is bare bones stuff, the type of set-up that most duos find effective with only so many hands and a sound that you can imagine being even more enthralling live.
‘Drunk’ is intoxicated with wild, sludge-laden riffage, interpreting someone’s angry, booze-fuelled meltdown into madness – “SHOW ME SOMETHING, GIMME ME DRINK/DONT WANNA WALK, DON’T WANNA THINK”. If you’re not already in pieces, or even supercharged for a stint in the pit…‘Axe’ delivers its finishing move with zero mercy. Drums are beaten to death and The Wytches-like guitars are piled into an over-spilling cauldron of noise, until literally everything is destroyed. Consuumer know exactly how they’re going to raise eyebrows and Shattered Fruit is a blistering introduction, with its unfiltered urgency and uncompromised angst. Bananas were definitely harmed in the making of this EP and that’s absolutely fine.
Shattered Fruit is independently released on 13th January 2017.
