Album Review: Menace Beach - Ratworld

Crawling out of the cesspit on the entrails of Hookworms and Eagulls is Ratworld, the debut album from Leeds band Menace Beach.

The band’s named after a shitty ‘90s NES game – and the touchstones don’t stop there. Unadulterated adulation of the likes of The Breeders (Elastic) seesaws to more straight-up rock (Lowtalkin). These influences are so ingrained into Ratworld that the album feels like a time capsule as much as homage. Then there’s the flagrant vulnerability of Blue Eye, which takes in the shoegaze dissonance/fragility dichotomy to perfection.