Review | Play Dead – Skint

Label: Blitzcat Records

Play Dead has been catching our attention, and the attention of others with a string of frantic, riff-fueled punk rock releases. Most notably ‘Shaun’, a track about a man getting in fights and necking pints. The band recently graced us with their debut EP ‘Skint’, a collective burst of their high octane punk sound.

‘Skint’ is five tracks of no-frills, pure punk energy, and from the opening track and lead single ‘Hide’, Play Dead throw a brick on the accelerator, turn the volume on the stereo up, and white knuckle the steering wheel.

With its verses full of indecision/defiance (“don’t want to shout, don’t want to be quiet, don’t want to get fat, don’t want to go on a diet”), the vocals scream for the working class. This is even clearer when it comes to the title track on ‘Skint’ “I’m Skint as fuck, card declined” and ‘Shaun’ with tales of the titular man “necking pints (and) starting fights”. This is the music of the streets after dark on the beer-soaked streets of London. The music may be the straightforward attack of three-chord punk with everything played loud and angry but why would it need to be anything else?

Having already gained airplay on Steve Lamacq’s and gained the accolade of ’6 Music Recommends’, Play Dead have got some weight behind them. With an EP that comes as the soundtrack for the South East London working class but speaks to more than just that, it’s not hard to see why.