We Insist! - Oh! Things Are So Corruptible

On first listen, We Insist! seem like a band that wear their influences too obviously on their sleeves – Tool, Faith No More and At The Drive-In spring to mind on hearing their stop/start alt-rock. However, with a few plays it's possible to get past this feeling for the most part, and recognise the subtleties of a stand-alone album. Granted, you could pick worse bands to ape and occasionally it's difficult to shake the similarities, but the brass section and the use of a softer guitar sound in places give it a different angle. It's where the horns let go on tracks like the sax splattered Half Awake that the band tread their own path. With a little tweaking to keep the ghosts of their sonic antecedents from your mind, I reckon We Insist! could be on the way to making a twitching, spasmodic gem in the future. [Matt Gollock]