zZz - Running With the Beast

Anti- really love to keep us guessing. Quite what the hell they plan on releasing next is anyone's guess, as Running With The Beast proves. Opening with an utterly dreadful piece of '80s New Romantic nonsense, prospects look bleak, yet second track Grip weighs in like The Birthday Party and it seems like things might be okay after all. Well, not quite. The rollercoaster continues and third song Spoil The Party again drags us reluctantly back to that darkest of eras. Sign of Love ups the ante for a second time with some far more left-field electronica, then things slip once more and the pattern forming becomes obvious. Ultimately it results in approximately half of a good album... but that also means half of a bad album. Which makes it all quite infuriating as the former proves the latter could well have been avoided; the over-riding feeling, therefore, is simple frustration. [Austin Tasseltine]