CWM Mate, what?

CWM? What does it stand for? Nope, I dunno. I haven't a scooby. No idea. Google? Nada. Alexa? Nowt.

It transpires that I’m in good company, as the band themselves are happy to let their local fanbase confabulate, cogitate and generally chew the cud over the band's acronym anonymity.

Recorded with a line-up of John Bunker (singer/guitarist/beard attached to a man), Miles Blacklock (drummer), Tom Hartley (bassist) and Rob Hill (lead guitarist), the songs on offer on this EP were originally put down in 2016 and were expected to be used for an inaugural LP.

CWM pick up the story. “We were waiting to finish a full-length album with these songs, however with the pandemic delaying that – and as we have a whole new batch of songs we’re recording that have a more mature and focused feel – we decided to release these tracks as an EP.”

The first three tracks – ‘Cheerful’, ‘Criminality’ and ‘Homely Streets’ – cut to the chase faster than Deep Purple’s ‘Speed King’ with 1998 Michael Stipe/REM Green album vocal intonations, slashing riffs and pounding drums that extol the virtue that ‘simple is best’.

CWM can draw inspiration from the longer closing tracks ‘Icebreaker’, with its atmospheric slow section twist, and ‘Raised As Wolves’, with its tumbling guitar undercurrent and clap-along closing section, as these two songs show that the band – when freeing themselves from the strictures of three-minute riffing bombast – have the ability to explore expanded sonic horizons.