Shame - Drunk Tank Pink
Three years after releasing their explosive debut album, Shame return with a project packed with dystopian lyricism, hard hitting guitar tones and newly layered percussive elements. The band have brought their best qualities from Songs of Praise with them to Drunk Tank Pink.Songs like March Day, Great Dog and the album’s first single, Alphabet, bring their signature, controlled, feel-good chaos to the project. As if you’ve been thrown in the centre of their mosh pit, screaming lyrics back at them with your hands up high.
However, the real significance of this album comes from Shame moving away from the successes of their previous work, stepping into new structural and thematic territory. The cathartic Born in Luton is a perfect blend of intensity and beauty, with multiple tempo changes and bellowing vocals, leading to Shame’s best song to date in the form of a destructive epic.
This album represents an evolution; from a group of sixteen-year-old boys writing songs above a pub in Brixton, to a fully-fledged band, standing as a landmark figure in the revitalised world of post-punk. We as listeners have journeyed with Shame through the raw sounds of their adolescence, to the ambitious creations of their early adulthood and we can’t wait to see where they will take us next.
9/10
