‘Spineless authoritarian, Cowards like they grovel, For an inch of kick, The white knight bathed in piss, Of a future, Unbearable’ (Swabbed)

I had the good luck to catch Pleasure on tour last year as they and Mother Nature laid waste to New River Studios.  The set kicked off with the lead singer, as I remember it, emerging from some sort of makeshift coffin.  It wasn’t entirely clear why, other than that was what he fancied doing.  It does, however, speak to the fevered, instinctual energy that permeates through every pore of their abrasively fraught debut album, Manic Phase.

And have no doubt, the Leeds band, who include members of Frisk, Total Con, and The Wound among their ranks, are in rampaging form.  A twin guitar attack forms the cornerstone – one teases out the sinuously dissonant leads and squalling solos, the other brings a more metallic brawn to bear – while the rhythm section goes about its work with a frantic relish.  The atmosphere is tensely claustrophobic, priming the desolation drenched vocals as they struggle to escape the suffocating tentacles of the surveillance state and entrenched consumerist compulsions alike.

The desperation contorted title track and the savagely seething Motivational Speaker suck us in, before the despairing urgency of Sneak and the bleakly chugging chorus to Homeowner spit us out.  Disconsolate, unsettling, and yet in a way that undeniably sparks your limbs into life.  Manic Phase is proof that amid our collective pain there is still pleasure to be found.