The Shits: Chewing on a Diet of Worms in OUTSIDELEFT

Diet of Worms
The Shits
(Rocket Recordings)

There is something to be said for both choosing the right name for your band, and for your album. Leeds noise rock supremos The Shits do neither with their latest album Diet of Worms. Largely because they are neither shit (far from it), nor is their album distasteful in the least. Despite sounding like they might be a Cradle of Filth tribute band with an album title like that, what you find inside is solid slabs of high intensity rock. Its not thrash-fast - this is not speed metal or hardcore. Think of the way Killing Joke pace things for maximum impact and you'd be on the right track. Their solid, feedback filled sound has a lot in common with KJ in some ways, rolling over you like a tiger tank and seeking that intensity that comes from the Jaz Coleman stare. The Shits are that stare turned into sound. There is a brooding hostility here that threatens but doesn't show its hand. The threat is enough. You know that you shouldn't be messing with them. Each track merges with the next - there are no singles on here - to build the hammering tension as it goes. That will stop Spotify skippers in their tracks. You have to be there for the whole ride. No crying to be let off. Just strap in and go with it. They reference The Stooges and Rainbow Grave, the latter being the more pertinent of the two, but I get it that they want you to know that they are crafting feedback into shapes that you won't expect. It has moved on a little from the garage punk of their previous album, You're a Mess and variety is not the point here. In places I could even swear that they were playing the exact same riffs that they opened the album with on 'In a Hell', but by the time the last notes of 'Three O'Clock In The Morning' die away, I am ready to swing the stylus back to the start of side A and go again. The adrenaline will do that to you.

Despite their keen-ness to ooze hate out of every groove in this record, there is a muscular beauty in this mess. The urgent yowls of front man Callum Howe fight to be heard over the sort of punishingly hostile noise that the six of them can make together. You can feel it drilling into your chest. Looking like extras in Prison Break, The Shits may appear scary, and maybe they are, but you always need something and someone to jolt you out of your complacency. GG Allin understood that. So do The Shits. We've all been to gigs full of of balding heads in faded band T Shirts nodding along in time like a convention of boiled egg collectors before shuffling out past the merch stall to their 4x4s. That's not going to break anyone out of any musical prisons.

Diet of Worms may have an indigestible title (though as Callum explains in our interview with him, there is a hidden meaning in that), but underneath I assure you, this is all red meat.

Essential Information:

Diet of Worms is released on April 3 on Rocket Recordings. Pre order it on vinyl HERE.

Tour dates (more to be announced shortly):

09 April / UK / Leeds / Brudenell Social Club (w/ Unsane)
16 April / BE / Brussels / Magasin 4
17 April / FR / Besancon / Les Passagers Du Zinc
19 April / CH / Geneva / L’ecurie
20 April / FR / Grenoble / Skatepark Sous Le Pont
22 April / FR / Toulouse / Le Ravelin
23 April / FR / Clermont-Ferrand / Fermenté.e
24 April / FR / Nantes / Blockhaus DY10
25 April / FR / Paris/Montreuil / Le Chinois
12 June / NO / Oslo / Hærverk i Parken
26 September / UK / London / The Windmill