Alpha Male Tea Party – Health

With some bands the music speaks for itself. You don’t need to know Alpha Male Tea Party are a three piece, that they hail from Liverpool, that this is their second album. All of that stuff is irrelevant.

You do need to know that they only play instrumental music because some of you won’t be interested in that. You also need to know where Alpha Male Tea Party fit on the ‘bands who play instrumental music’ scale – are they more Mogwai than Man or Astro-man? The answer is neither. The scale has become a triangle. From this moment on, instrumental bands will be rated according to the ‘bands who play instrumental music’ triangle.

What kind of music do Alpha Male Tea Party make then? One word. Four letters. Prog. Ah, you might say, aren’t Mogwai a bit prog? You could argue it, but Alpha Male Tea Party don’t sound anything like Mogwai though – there is no doom here. Not for nothing is this known as math rock, by which we mean here are technical musicians being technical in a way that's not dull and can sometimes be fun, even if there are times when it’s wearing too. 

But never mind that. The people who already like Alpha Male Tea Party will like what they hear here. There’s no song title as funny as You Eat Hummus, Of Course You Listen To Genesis from their first album, but you can chuckle quietly at Carpet Diem and Have You Ever Seen Milk? as you enjoy the riffage. And riffage is what it’s all about – great soaring smoking monster piles of burning riffage, made to be turned up loud in order to drown out every terrible thought in your head. What more can you ask for? 

Listen to: Ballerina, Don’t You Know Who I Think I Am