Carnivores – Let's Get Metaphysical
“When was the last time you did something for the first time?” asks Kenny Leckie, raising an interesting point. Can you recall hearing a new guitar band who genuinely sounded like nothing before? Paisley trio Carnivores opt for a different approach, filching ideas from all and sundry. In mashing up the last 20 years of six-string-slingers, they also suggest that the distinctions between subgenres ain’t so cut-and-dried.
Let’s Get Metaphysical is chock-full of tunes. The title track jangles pacily through a minefield of Devo jerks, hinting at the stop-start complexities to follow, before the band’s influences leap most noticeably to the fore: check the harmony-laden Crooked Teeth (Weezer) and Lion Tamer’s tidal wave of riffs (Converge). Other sterling efforts imply a plethora of seemingly-disparate influences (often within the same song) whilst managing to stay neatly cohesive. With the promising groundwork laid in this mastery of everyone else’s special moves, it's exciting to imagine how their own hyperkinetic ideas might evolve. [Will Fitzpatrick]
Playing Glasgow's 13th Note on 25 Oct