10 Past 12 Records/Unless You Try Records, May 8, 2020
Snuff doesn’t change for no one.
Snuff’s been doing their thing for a long while, since something like 1986. They’ve survived break-ups and personnel changes. They’ve survived the rise and fall of punk. They’ve survived the rise and fall of the compact disc and the collapse of the music industry as we knew it. They’re survivors.
Through all of that surviving, Snuff have been putting out records with a remarkably consistent sound that leans hard into their British roots without them ever really ending up pigeon-holed. I recognize all that. But I’ve also never been able to really get into them. I think the first I heard of them came on the Physical Fatness Vol III Fat Wreck Chords comp from 1997. Their two songs on there (“Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads” and “Arsehole”) were both just fine. I’d put the record on, listen, and never find the urge to skip them. But neither motivated me to go buy their stuff. They were just there, sort of blending in with the other stuff. Eventually I did listen to a bunch of their other stuff and still couldn’t kick that feeling. Always fine, never sought out.
Now, 30-plus years in, Snuff again drops something new, this time called The Wrath Of Thoth. On The Wrath, Snuff keep doing what they do best, which is to say sounding like themselves. “Drinking Freely From the Chalice of Lunacy” opens up with a bunch of melody and a mid-tempo stomp. I’m not sure what they’re going on about, but it seems like it could fit some idea of going mad in the lockdown world of COVID. It’s solid. Same goes for “Conductor 71”, a hollered and rambunctious number with all sorts of gang vocals delivering back-up on the chorus. I like this one quite a bit.
But then I lose my interest in some of this stuff, too. The desperate gravelly-voiced exclamations and accenting organs don’t do enough to save “Poetic Nonsense” for me. It just never hits right, beating me up with organ-vamping hollered rushes between machine gun-fire snare hits as the song wears towards an end. And “King of the Wild” has maybe my favorite lines on the record, opening with “do you really think we give a shit about you, I think you think we do” and tossing off attacks against status. But the sort of old-timey throwback bounce and horns just don’t do it for me. Nothing reprehensible, nothing that I’d have to skip, but nothing I’m going to seek out.
And really, I could say the same for The Wrath Of Thoth. Snuff does what they do well. They do the raucous punk rock thing, they mix it up with some throwback moments and ska rhythms. And if Snuff has been your thing, I think The Wrath Of Thoth will be your thing, too. It may not be mine, but there’s no accounting for taste.
You might like this if:
- You like what Snuff does
- You like raucous and rough punk rock and are okay with stylistic detours
You might not if:
- You don’t like it when music gets old-timey adventurous
- You don’t like rough and tumbling punk rock
ryan is a reviewer and news editor for TGEFM. He’s very secretive, he might be an alien.
