Single review: KASMS – Bone You

KASMS, eh? Where did they spring from? No matter, they’re all over the shop now innit.

My lapse into cool urban youth-based speech there was intentional, dear reader; KASMS are about as London as it’s possible to get. Since forming late 2007 they’ve survived on a diet of shows within the M25, escaping for a brief tour before diving back within its warm embrace. It’s remarkable how they’ve managed to come from nowhere to reaching their soon come Euro tour, the slots in Camden Crawl, the press interest; it’s remarkable how… oh, right, the drummer’s the guy from Test-Icicles.

Signed to the so-cool-it-hurts Trouble Records, “Bone You” is actually their second release after the earlier self-titled EP, the first sighting of the dubiously genre’d shriek-beat. And what is shriek-beat? Well, on this evidence, it’s X-ray Spex styled punk rock. I say “styled”; it’s pretty much a direct lift, but, hey, no harm in that, especially if Poly herself is too busy making execrable Christmas songs.

Brief, defiantly rough-edged (recorded in Rory’s Hoxton studio, dontchaknow) despite it being mixed at Abbey Road and pleasingly clangy, “Bone You” is not too shabby at all. If it wasn’t for my childish antipathy towards bands that seem so insider-ready right from the get go I may even have warmer feelings about the whole shebang (and Rachel certainly encourages warm feelings in a childish man). [Easy, tiger. - Ed.]

So, yeah, “Bone You” – noisy enough to belay charges of cynicism, charged enough to act as bait for the album. The second track is fucking shit though.