Scrim have mixed up sturdy blues-rock metal with the rhythmic funk of Rage against The Machine and their many copyists, and with some degree of success –the riffs and hooks are catchy enough, the band plays tightly, and the songs are short and sharp, without overstaying their welcome. None of it's particularly original, but it's done well enough that originality is irrelevant.

The weak points are the vocals and the lyrics. Singer Alek McGovern sounds like a middle-class kid doing a creditable pastiche of Johnny Rotten fronting the Wildhearts, capturing the sneering drawl without nailing any sense of genuine rage or danger. Don't get me wrong, he can sing well enough – but he'll sound better when he finds his natural voice.

But while delivering a title track that's about as rebellious as choosing Music Tech for one of your A-levels, and a second song bemoaning how much of a chore it'll be to have to go to university ... well, it doesn't come across as very believable, no matter how much effort has been put into sounding sincere about it. There's a lot of promise in Scrim, thanks to obvious technical proficiency, but it's going to take some slightly deeper life experience before they can deliver songs that can convince me they're any more revolutionary than voting for the Liberal Democrats.



Track Listing