‘Is your blood on boil? Is your flag unfurled? Do you hear the sound? Of savage lust, A primal scream, A fatal thrust’ (Apex Calling)

Good ideas should not be thrown away lightly.  This, in many ways, is the defining mantra of Station Model Violence.  They need to be refined, draped in nuanced detailing, layered with a deft subtlety, and allowed to breath to the point where they are all enveloping.  What emerges is an album of relentlessly propulsive post-punk.  It is a sonic massage that is warmly immersive yet also simmering with a nebulous sense of sinister foreboding.

The band hail from Melbourne, featuring former members of R.M.F.C., Straightjacket Nation, and Total Control, and this is their debut release.  The album’s scaffolding is built around Heat, a hypnotically monolithic, eight minute slab that kicks off the second side.  The brightly jangling guitars and the limber rhythm section lock-into a remorseless groove that is braided through with serpentine saxophone.  At the same time, the sombrely deep vocals lean into the power of repetition, inviting the listener to lose themselves in the song’s embrace.  The fact that it barely registers as a fraction of its run time speaks to that undeniable allure.

These are the fundamentals that the band rework and reshape with intriguing invention throughout.  Melody bathed groove and vocal reiteration provoking each other into an atmosphere of fevered introspection.  And each track pulses with its own fierce clarity.  The darkly urgent Leisure with its call of ‘And no one knew your name’.  The haunting vocals of Apex Calling that prime a euphoric, saxophone fuelled finale.  The plaintively escalating Falling Down.  Station Model Violence proves a richly mesmerising introduction.