- Sydney garage punk duo Us The Band is at first glance just one of the many bands of that scene pumping out generic mosh-inducing punk rock, however their new EP But Where Do They Go is in fact, dynamite. Sydney’s eclectic Rice is Nice records released this in February with general applause from a few Australian and International music sites and rags. Just by the way, they deserve backslaps for the success of Straight Arrows, Angie, Donny Benet and the Frowning Clouds too. As a record label they are a jack of all trades and master of none, they'll release your stuff as long as you're cool and you live in Sydney.

The relentless shortfast drumming and venomously tuneful lo-fi shrieking of Us The Band is spellbinding beyond the cheap colour of its reverb and repetitive hooks. The EP opens on a two-minute psych-rock instrumental banger (HelterMan) with the pace and attitude of The Cosmic Psychos or King Gizzard space-jamming. There I Go, Joiner Group and Ghoul are fairly similar songs and even sharing similar hooks to point of distraction, though it’s no lie that they are balls-out lo-fi speed tweaking punk rock tracks. They just don’t match the desperately soulful ruckus of Fallout, the power kicker that had Henry Rollins spinning the Sydney duo on the air in the US. The collected lyrics from Joiner Group “I’m Burning Up/Are You Burning Up?”, “Keep on losing air” in Ghoul, “Get It Away/Get It Away” in And I Will, mentions of burnt skin and extreme anxiety suggest this band is run by a very fast and totally guilty arsonist. You can’t conjure so many metaphors for fire and then shred through seven songs all under three minutes and not imagine a crazy man writhing sweatily and shouting into a crowd of people he may or not set alight with a bit of hairspray and a lighter. And I Will.. is the pick of this review, a punk rock ballad with all the goods from Fallout and then some, mixed with some better awareness of the emotional stress their music makes and the ensuing acceleration of exactly that thing that gets you riled up. Hopefully it’s riled up to break it down in the front row and not set fire to a school.

-Matt Hall.