The altering of their moniker for this EP has seen the quintet – Frank, Evan Nestor (guitars), Matt Armstrong (bass), Kayleigh Goldsworthy (piano, organ, violin) and Thursday drummer Tucker Rule – possibly sounding a little more passive than on its predecessor. But the urgency and intensity that defined that record, the first music Frank wrote after the near-fatal bus incident in Australia in 2016, remains intact.
It kicks off with the rip-roaring riffs of Violence, a thunderingly hypnotic, groove-laden number on which Frank’s voice warbles in and out of emotional control. It’s almost as if he’s trying to keep the demons inside him from coming out, but it’s a fight he’s unable to win. ‘Gimme gimme gimme just a bit of your soul,’ he pleads, but it’s less a polite request than a demand. ‘You’re gonna wish you’d never been born.’ It’s less than four minutes long, but it feels – in the best possible way – like a lifetime in purgatory.
By comparison, Sewer Wolf feels like a song in slow-motion, but it’s no less forceful, its sludgy, driving, off-kilter melody punctuated by Frank’s guttural, visceral screams. It’s not pretty in the slightest, but a song called Sewer Wolf shouldn’t be, and it more than lives up to the gruesome, grimy expectations of its title.
