The Marder - Men's Ruin

As any self-respecting Star Wars Extended Universe nerd will know, the haggard Emperor Palpatine created several clones of himself in order to ensure that his dark influence would continue to perpetuate itself throughout the galaxy. Upon hearing the Manc-tastic post-punk of The Marder, I’m convinced that Mark E. Smith has visited the same laboratory. On the song If The West Apologised to the East, Benjamin Ward barks with a suitably Smithian fascistic authority, over a primal rock backing that rumbles like a panzer tank. That’s not to say that The Marder are Fall imitators, far from it; elsewhere on Men’s Ruin, major key guitar and bass are entangled into riffs that wouldn’t sound out of place in the post-punk poppery that was in vogue circa 2005. The Marder have produced a brilliant EP, giving more weight to theory that Manchester will keep churning out great bands until the sun implodes.