If you turn back the rock clock to the mid Eighties to when most of us were first trying to break through as musicians, you literally had to fight your way through legions of totally bollocks bands wanting to be either the Alarm or U2 just to get a gig.  Then when you did finally find a rock band to play with, they were either playing fifteen minute songs about Hadrian’s Wall, or knocking out piss poor versions of what they thought was AOR. Yeah that’s right arena rock in your local workingmen’s club…Like that’s ever going to catch on !!!!!

These days however you can’t move for quality new bands to go and see live and it seems that one of the main hotbeds for new talent is right here in my neck of the woods in South Wales.  The list of quality acts coming through like Lifer, The Guns, Fell On Black Days, Spiridion and Mutator is seemingly endless, and you do have to wonder if this new generation are all looking back at the utter shit we had to once suffer and are just saying …never a-fuckin’-gain!

Which brings me to this self released debut three track EP from South Wales’ latest new kids on the (thrash metal) block, and latest band to be added to that never ending list, Newport four-piece Outgunned.

Put simply this EP is just fucking astounding. From the opening thunderous staccato riffing that heralds the arrival of the EP’s title track, to the dying Maiden-esque harmonics of ‘Outnumbered’, this is the sound of a band whose musical maturity speaks volumes. Sandwiched between these two tracks and making up the perfect Outgunned club sandwich is the storming ‘Rats And Parasites’, that somehow manages to encapsulate as much energy and hatred as you can get into a five minute song without spontaneously combusting, whilst doffing its cap influence wise to, amongst others, Paradise Lost, Sepultura and of course Machine Head. It is however the EP’s lead track ‘Through The Eyes Of Despair’ that I keep returning to time and again, with its windmilling midsection and guttural scream for recognition that should soon see the Outgunned lads tearing their way out of the local scene and onto national tour supports just like fellow local thrashers Revoker are doing right now

If you want to check out exactly what I’m raving on about here, then check out the band’s Myspace below, or better still why not go and see them live at a venue near you soon, and be become a part of the ever growing Outgunned army.

Now just remember that mantra lads ……never again, never again!

www.myspace.com/outgunnedband