YOBS / YOBS Black LP Vinyl
YOBS' YOBS Black LP Vinyl
Liverpool misfits YOBS will release their self-titled debut album on May 3rd 2024 via Fuzz Club, following on from their debut double single, 'Fortune Teller b/w Cemetery Man', which saw the four-piece burst on the scene late last year in a gloriously scuzzy and hedonistic blaze. "All skull-crushing riffs and hallucinogenic effects", as Clash Magazine wrote, YOBS deal in hard-edged, primitive garage-punk salvos that race by with a bludgeoning intensity. Across the album's ten tracks and rapid 26-minute running time, the band revel in an abrasive, fun-as-hell rock'n'roll that will leave your bones rattling just as much as your speakers.
Emerging out of the rubble of the now-defunct Liverpool bands Weird Sex and Ohmns, YOBS was kick-started in 2022 and is made up of Joey Ackland (Vocals), Alex Smith (Bass/Vocals), Michael Quinlan (Guitar/Vocals) and George Gebbie (Drums). Their debut full-length – recorded in four days at Hackney Road Studios with “our master and mate” James Aparicio – arrives off the back of a 2023 spent playing rowdy, ear-ringing shows with the likes of A Place To Bury Strangers, Mark Sultan, C.O.F.F.I.N, Alien Nosejob and more. The songs on the album have been hardened by YOBS' riotous live shows, delivered on the record with a gusto that yearns to be experienced in dingy venues as Ackland writhes around the stage and entangles himself with a mic lead.
'Fortune Teller', a roller-coaster of high-energy riffs and pounding drums, began life as a warm-up in practice, before evolving live and then being committed to tape. The stomping lead single 'Wasted' was the first song YOBS wrote together and became an instant live favourite, the gang-vocal chorus often screamed back at them by their inebriated crowd. "This one was inspired by a heavy weekend at a festival I played in another band", Ackland recalls of the aptly-titled single: "We had over-indulged a bit and after crawling to a portaloo, I ended up getting stuck in there for what seemed like a year. Every time I tried to leave I couldn’t find my way out. I ended up sat on the floor, giving myself a bit of a talking to."
While often inspired by and perfectly suited to boozy high-jinks, the 'YOBS' LP doesn't shy away from more serious and angered subject matter. The caustic noise-rocker 'Cyanide' is inspired by the tragic story of scientist and mathematician Alan Turing, driven to poisoning himself by a homophobic establishment and legal system – the song "written from the angle of one of the angry mob who stalked him, and stopped him living a normal life." Elsewhere, the gnarly 'Head The Ball' – the heaviest cut on the album, bordering on hardcore territory – takes aim at sneering middle-class elitism: "We never aimed to be a political band, but it’s pretty hard not to be influenced by the growing populism and this yearning to be an elitist. It's gross isn't it? So, this is saying fuck you to them. Don't look down your nose at us, when you are licking the boots of the royals, waving shitty flags and supporting the likes of Johnson or Trump... Vive la revolution, vive le YOBS!"
