With their self-titled first album, the genre-defying trio of Tim Stewart, Jonny Drummond, and Tosh Peterson stormed onto the scene with an explosive fusion of punk ethos, alt-rock ferocity, and darkwave soul. Forged on the road while touring with pop royalty like Lady Gaga and The Weeknd, DAMNAGE isn’t just a side project; it’s a visceral declaration of identity, purpose, and raw sonic power.
From the opening track ‘Wasteland’, the band sets a high-voltage tone. It’s a thunderclap of dystopian poetry and hard-hitting riffs that feels like Turnstile colliding headfirst with Nine Inch Nails in a mosh pit engineered by IDLES. Stewart’s vocals shift from a gravelly snarl to a chilly, melodic croon, echoing the duality of a world spinning off its axis. Drummond’s basslines throb like a panic attack you can dance to, and Peterson’s drumming? A caffeinated blitz that doesn’t miss a heartbeat.
Each of the ten tracks on DAMNAGE feels like a chapter in a diary scrawled in blood, sweat, and distortion. ‘Million Ways’ unpacks modern madness over a swirling rhythm section, while ‘Time to Kill’ is a fever dream of pandemic paralysis, claustrophobic yet cathartic. ‘Love and Money’ slices through consumer culture with surgical sharpness, and ‘Cheaptalk’ spits venom at society’s corporate phonies.
But DAMNAGE isn’t all gnash and fury. ‘Never See It’, the haunting closer, reveals a different shade of a slow-burning meditation on invisibility and emotional disconnection that lingers long after the feedback fades. Stewart’s plaintive vocals ache with vulnerability, showing the band’s range not just musically but emotionally.
Despite its polish, a given, considering the trio’s pedigrees, the album never feels overproduced. It’s jagged where it needs to be, slick only in service to the storytelling. Fans of The Strokes and Amyl and the Sniffers will find plenty to love in the album’s kinetic energy and blunt honesty.
Born from global stages but aimed squarely at the underground, the band’s music is made for sweating out your demons in a dark, crowded room. As the band puts it, hot and cold, raw, feral, and calculated. This record doesn’t ask for your attention: it grabs you by the throat and demands it.