"County Lines" and "Shaun The Creep" by Wallace & Vomit
Review
Wallace & Vomit fans will be celebrating today with the release of a brace of new tracks: "County Lines" and "Shaun The Creep"
Described as a "double single" by their PR team, it might be what used to be called a double A side but it might also mean two singles released simultaneously.
That each has separate cover art (by different people) and were recorded in different places by different people, it's easy to consider them as distinct entities.
Taking them in the order I wrote them down above, "County Lines" was engineered at Complete Sound Studio by Geordie Mike and mixed & mastered by Louis Scheuer who is also responsible for the artwork.
As befits a thrashed hard punk tune it doesn't hit a second minute. However despite its brevity, it has three distinct movements: the middle one being substantially slower than its bookends: which is pretty remarkable.
In stark contrast, "Shaun The Creep" was captured at Mosaic Audio Labs by Max Jennings and its art is courtesy of Alex Vale. This one makes its partner seem like "War & Peace" in regard to relative lengths. It falls well short of even a minute.
So neither remotely outstays its welcome & I imagine those fans I mentioned will put both on rotation or else their pleasure is going to be quite short lived.
Economical in some respects, you do get good value from all the ingredients as instruments (save for the passage in "County Lines" just mentioned) play at breakneck speed with the vocals somehow managing to keep up.
This does leave working the lyrical meaning out that much trickier. Tempting as it is to ascribe "County Lines" to an expose of niche narcotics trading, I think that it might be using that as a symbol for having a bit of a go at provincial manners & customs. "Shaun The Creep" lays well into an individual. Their name could well be Shaun I suppose unless they've changed it to protect the identity of their target. On the other hand, I may be entirely wrong. That's the beauty of the genre.
Fast, furious, fresh. Fair enough.
