Sleigh Bells

I maintain a healthy amount of distrust of television advertising. Perhaps it's just a function of my inherent British cynicism, but I figure that if someone is trying to make me want to buy their product, then there must be be something wrong with it.

Of course this doesn't mean that advertising has no effect; merely that it has a different effect. I refuse to buy Haribo sweets until they make an advert that doesn't make me want to throw my beercan at the telly. And I'm fairly certain that the Compare The Market adverts have done more to increase the sales of meerkat-related junk than they have to promote use of their own service. Baby product adverts make me want to buy condoms. Bank adverts make me want to withdraw all my money and keep it in a sack under the bed. Aftershave adverts make me want to buy a cricket bat and some nails.

And this advert for some kind of appalling wanker phone made me buy Treats by Sleigh Bells. The bright flashing lights and spiralling images of internet connectivity didn't do much to set my consumer glands throbbing, but the thirty seconds of "Infinity Guitars" playing in the background sure did get my feets a tappin'.

Turns out that Sleigh Bells is mostly Derek E Miller, one time guitarist with Floridian screamo types Poison The Well. Which seems odd, as the experimental hardcore of his old outfit is about a million miles from the obnoxious noise-pop of his current day job. But what the hell do I know? I'm pretty sure that if they'd made a TV advert for the Sleigh Bells record, I'd loathe and despise it as much as everyone else seems to.

Also, I'd probably have a shiny new wanker phone.

Website: http://www.infinitybells.com/

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/sleighbellsmusic

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleigh_Bells

Hymns

I saw these guys earlier in the year, playing alongside Shapes. I get the impression that I should have given more of a shit about seeing them, as frontman Sam used to be in another band called Blakfish. They bashed out some kind of alt-math-pop reminiscent of early Biffy Clyro, before evaporating in a puff of apathy a year or so ago.

But I'd never really given Blakfish the time before; and now that I have, I'm still not that fussed. Instead, I gave a shit about seeing Hymns because they had great songs, that they played really well. They have less of a garagey sound than the average guitar/drums two-piece outfit; it's still got a delightfully lo-fi feel to it, but they don't feel the need to turn up the fuzz and the feedback to try to flesh out the sound.

The recently released five track DVD "Revelations" is limited to just 150 copies, comes in some natty packaging and is highly recommended.

Website: http://prayforhymns.tumblr.com/

Myspace: nope

Wikipedia: nope

Kepone

I once read a review for these guys in some magazine, which said something along the lines of "Kepone's ascent to rock stardom is unlikely to be interrupted by bassist Michael Bishop winning Miss World."

Hardly a startling observation. But based on this entirely uninformative piece of music journalism, and the fact that two of my other favourite bands at the time had names beginning with the letter K (Kyuss and Karma To Burn, if you're wondering), I picked up a record.

I'm not too sure what I was expecting; probably something a bit sludgy or stoner, and almost certainly not the abrasive hick-punk that did spill out of my speakers. It was damn good though, and got even better when they meandered off into more improvised sounding jams.

They are now, of course, quite defunct. As far as I can tell, they were generally well regarded but not exactly commercially successful. Despite Michael Bishop never winning Miss World.

Website: nope

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/keponetribute (tribute page)

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepone_(band)

Necro Deathmort

Ye gods, this is some dark shit right here.

Kind of droning doom fused with a bit of dubstep. Or dubstep fused with a bit of droning doom. Either way I refuse to coin the term doomstep. Because it's stupid.

The Pixie describes dubstep as sounding like giant robots having sex under water.

Necro Deathmort sound like that, except that it's happening at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and the oceans are made of tar, and a planet is crashing into them in slow motion, and the planet is on fire.

Website: nope

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/necrodeathmort

Wikipedia: nope