The Hyena Kill

Slowly, steadily, loudly (if you’ve seen them live you’ll know that) Manchester duo The Hyena Kill have been building to this debut album. A couple of EPs and the aforementioned live performances have consolidated and refined them. Not refined in polished and buffed to six pack flavourless perfection, but they are lean with just enough fat to taste and chew on.

And it hits hard and fast, like being mugged by the Flash, and almost as bewildering in its initial aggression. It could be open to charges that ‘this all sounds the same’. Though subsequent listens - and you’d be a fool if you didn’t - opens the album up, revealing shifting moods and tones.

Take Crosses, it opens in a hail of feedback, tribal drums, angular riffing, laced with glacial touches of guitar and Steve Dobb’s voice which flits between reflective and rampant roar. The ante is upped as the song comes towards the end and they let loose. All in under 4 minutes, with just a guitar and drums. Your Loss keeps the momentum going, as does the primal Still Sick with drummer Lorna Blundell in a particular feral mood.

Then out of the blue comes along The Waiting Room featuring Sally Mason on vocals. An eerie plaintive number that’s at odds with most of the album but its’s perfectly incongruous. It’s a sorbet though as they hit the listener for six with the ferocious Tongue Tied straight after.

Closing the album is Atomised with the band slowing down and spreading out. The intensity is still palpable, just measured, this has the feeling of a lament, as Blundell and Dobbs interplay taking the song through the calm before the storm.

It’s an impressive debut with The Hyena Kill combining classic rock with the more technical elements that heavy bands are experimenting with these days. It's very aggressive in places but there's more than enough evidence here to indicate that this isn't a band that is going to be bound by genre conventions.