The Scare - Chivalry

Wed 7th Nov, 2007 in Music Reviews

The Scare
Chivalry
Below Par Records/Virgin

It doesn’t necessarily offer up many moments of differentiation, but former Gold Coast group The Scare could well be one of the most exciting groups to release a debut album in 2007. Having released a couple of EPs, been ridiculed – incorrectly – for being Blood Brothers copyists, and decamped to the UK, the Scare are at the point where they may well explode on the international stage.

Chivalry gives every indication of being an album that music aficionados will look back on in the years to come as an epochal release – it’s suffused with a zeal and an enthusiasm for loud, brash and broad statements of sound, all fury and bluster. But what sets it apart is that it’s filled with genuinely exciting songs; from the moment the feedback seeps into the ripping and tearing first single Bats! Bats! Bats! to when Whiskey Bottles clinks to a close, The Scare achieve something special with their debut album.

It’s an unrelenting sound, certainly, and one that offers up constant adrenalized rock – œn roll – this band is not an emo act, nor a screamo one, as songs like the Cramps-like Eighty Eight and the furious former EP cut Cry Junkie attest. The obvious inspirations are instead the pure post-punk chaos of the likes of the Birthday Party, with frontman KISS Reid a dynamic and energised frontman. He’s very different to Nick Cave though – where the now Bad Seeds mainman has a beautiful baritone, Reid instead is more like Cedric Bixler from At the Drive-In, capable of vocal theatrics but always intelligent enough to reel it in to not completely show off his vocal prowess.

What will be most fascinating to see is where The Scare go from here – Chivalry is a great debut because it acts as a jumping off point for the band to grow. Having shed their keyboard player after developing their sound in the industrial confines of Birmingham in the UK, the Scare are far tougher, fiercer and more furiously driven than the band which left Australia in order to find their future direction. Now, with the assistance of Scott Horscroft (whose ever-burgeoning CV now includes the likes of the Sleepy Jackson, Silverchair, and the Panics), they’ve crafted an album that will stand the test of time.

watch the clip for Bats Bats Bats

Watch the clip for the second single Eighty Eights