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A Magazine for Sheffield

Inside Out

Drop tune, just before the strings hang loose on your guitar, ratchet up the volume, max-out on fuzz with a generous helping of overdrive and you have a recipe for an auditory bludgeoning. And here it is. Inside Out is replete with beefy, pounding drum riffs underpinning a fat guitar mix, filled out with a subterranean layer of digital programming. I didn’t know what to make of this conflagration of screaming anguish on first listening, but the driving, thunderous mix has a pull and a draw to it that is strangely mesmerizing.

Andy Clarke growls, screams and roars out his minimalist lyrics and simple messages. The opener has Clarke chanting its title, “Why, why make me feel this way?” ‘Break’ kicks off with a screeching “I have no voice / I want to scream”, setting the nerves on edge and then piling in to knock them completely senseless. “Everything is relative and everything is slipping away / Just walk away, just walk away” is the tirade in ‘Everything is Relative’. ‘Finally Home’ provides the lilting refrain, “Wherever she may be / That’s home for me” – a fragment of light relief and optimism after the tormented questioning, even if delivered in a slightly demented way.

This is industrial, avant-garde rock that plunges the listener into a sensory pounding. The tracks definitely have a forceful edge and Clarke takes a few risks with the mix that catapult the songs into one implosion after another.

This is music that is not familiar territory to me, but I’ve listened several times and it’s definitely growing on me. This is music for the outraged, for anyone feeling that the world is a strange and somewhat convoluted reality. There is a driving urgency to songs such as ‘Why’, ‘Rainbows in the Night Sky’ and the cracking ‘Inside Out’. Dig in and prepare yourself – The Gifted are here to bombard your tympanic membrane and frazzle a few neurons.