Plate Six are a hard act to place in a convenient box. Their sound is descended from the DC proto-hardcore of Fugazi et al, with angular discordant riffs, wrenched vocals and a general defiance of accepted aesthetic norms – easy listening, they are not. There is, however, little artificial distortion at play, merely the saturation of volume, and balancing the atonal melodies is a complexity of song structure that owes a lot to the post-rock scene.

The result is an album of sprawling crumbled architecture, each piece of music indicating a lot more intelligence and introspection than a first listen might suggest – though song titles like 'Concrete Mouth of Safety' and 'Maximalist Anthem' give the right hints. Some songs feature long meandering digressions of sound, exploring riffs and themes until they become unrecognisable; other songs introduce a hook only to abandon it two or four bars later. 'Battle Hymns for a New Republic' mirrors social and urban decay in a world increasingly devoid of meaning and certainty.

The delivery is controlled, but no less furious for that. Plate Six sound like a band who are driven to create, a band who make music for their own catharsis as much as for public consumption. Their songs come across as attempts to diagram the world and their relationship to it, and as a lament for something lost and undefined. Too clever for the mohawk-and-safety-pin punks, too sharp and angry for the art-house snobs, they're off in a corner on their own, and seem quite content to be so.

Which is probably for the best, if only for the sake of avoiding disappointment – Plate Six's music is never going to impress a large number of people, but they appear to have one of those hermetically complete internal mythologies that certain people will latch on to and follow like faithful cultists.

These acolytes will likely be gathered from their live shows; as rewarding and visceral as 'Battle Hymns for a New Republic' may be, the sound captured here hints at the sort of band who are always more exciting on stage – you can picture the aloof self-involvement, the barely contained restlessness and fury seething beneath the surface. If you yearn for music that produces more questions than it answers, Plate Six might be very deserving of your time.



Track Listing