The Meffs – Business Review 23.9.26 ****

The Meffs – ‘Business’ – Ok the long-awaited newie from Lewis and Lily of The Meffs following the amazing ‘What A Life in’ 2024. It’s been months of relentless touring for this hard-working band, so how they fitted this in, I don’t know. What I do know is with all these 50 years of punk bollocks there are some great bands still about making a righteous racket with something important to say in these darker than usual times and the Meffs are one of them.

And the album seems to reflect that. It’s overall darker and denser than ‘Life’. The distortion on the guitars is set to maximum gain and the sound is heavily compressed. There’s lots of treated vocals, and Lily switches between her soft Essex twang and almost death metal screams in choruses.

There are hardcore/speed metal songs and hints of Richie Stotts of The Plasmatics punk metal buzz – like ‘Dreaming’, ‘Disorder’ and ‘Fight’. The latter at a run time of 32 seconds, could give any hardcore band a run for their money and will no doubt cause mayhem in the mosh pits live.

‘Love To Lose’ sounds more like the Meffs of old with its staccato single-string picked riff, and ‘So Modern’ has been in the set since ‘What A Life’ and was always a great song.

If I have a small criticism, they’ve gone for power and it’s all pretty full on and intense and I miss the dynamics and the open space they’ve used in songs like ‘Only Human,’ where sometimes less can be more.

‘Like Gravity’, the last song is my favourite track and to me shows how good the band are becoming in their songwriting and how imaginative a two piece can be.

Available in a bewildering array of coloured vinyls, collectors’ packs, and even a tape. I paid an extra £4.99 and got the additional tracks, including very fine versions of the Prodigy’s ‘Breathe’ and X Ray Spex’s ‘Identity.’

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