Shooting Daggers - ‘Love & Rage’ review
Shooting Daggers by Martyna Bannister
When we spoke Shooting Daggers recently they painted a vivid and intriguing picture of their upcoming debut album Love & Rage. With it’s release coming this week, our excitement is at its peak. Love & Rage is out on 16 February via New Heavy Sounds, here's what we think:
‘Dare’ starts reminiscent of a track like Mötley Crüe’s ‘Kickstart my Heart’, despite being the antithesis at its centre. It keeps the excellent intro, built off a droning guitar, but replaces the trashy 80’s bulls**t with awesome in-your-face punk. Screaming “Do It Yourself” stands as both a message for listeners and exactly what Shooting Daggers have done by betting on themselves. Harcore songs are at their best when they do a lot with a little, and that's exactly what ‘Dare’ does. It doesn’t fabricate any anti-establishment message, it just points out the obvious, they aren't going to give it to you.
In that same vein, ‘Not My Rival’ dropped as a single in November with an edgy DIY music video that we loved. It's more of a classic punk vibe, but trying to pigeonhole the track would be detrimental to its message. Enter “Queercore”. To quote Shooting Daggers themselves, this is "the new generation that shakes things up”. 'Not My Rival' is a continuation of Shooting Daggers replacing outdated styles with something in your face, new and exciting. ‘Not My Rival’ builds its foundation on loads of gang vocals. At points, this outweighs Sal Pellegrin's own vocals and the instrumentals. That plays into the track's message, as the name suggests, about being on each other's side.
'Smug' is lashings more of the stuff that has just had praise heaped on it. This has a banger sound, the opening riff reminded me a lot of 'Weird Punx' by Cancer Bats. The track dropped with a music video on 17 January that was somehow more DIY than the last. We're talking clips shot on public pavements, pubs, and on the 2nd floor of double-decker buses. 'Wipeout' which follows is a skating-themed sub-2-minute romp (+1 point for cowbell).
Better still is the sense of continuing community Shooting Daggers have woven into the album, mentioning in advance that the album would focus on "unity, sorority, self-love, taking the power back, queer love and skateboarding". And it's always exciting seeing bands decide to wing out a 90-second banger. This and 'Smug' really feel built to run one after the other as a good couple of tracks.
'A Guilty Conscience Needs An Accuser' slows things right down. The longest track on the album is melancholic, somehow being both on the nose because of the title, but has an abstract sound. 'Guilty' has some very ethereal sounding vocals, which sound great as a kind of anomaly on Love & Rage. Earlier 'Dare' was praised for doing a lot with a little, they do that again here, but in a different style. It has extra ambience over the other tracks and some perfectly on-beat drumming from Raquel J Alves.
That level of quality continues into 'Tunnel Vision', through the constantly chugging bass from Bea. The full album didn't need this level of grooviness to it, but it's nice to know it's an option for Shooting Daggers to use. 'Bad Seeds' lets off another excellent shot of punk noise, again around the 90-second mark. This takes the praised drumming on the previous two tracks, and turns it up to "relentless”. The picture painted in this short window of "red nails, spiked bats", is very badass.
Rounding out the album is 'Love & Rage'. Shooting Daggers yo-yo between sounds in the 2nd half of this album, this being a similar vibe to 'Guilty'. There were a range of feelings on the first listen of this track, mainly that it wasn't what was expected from the title track. That's absolutely not a bad thing. Shooting Daggers' softer side is a very welcome one, as they've not gone to the well too often. The main thing Love & Rage, both album and song, can boast, is an unwavering level of passion. The guitar at the end of 'Love & Rage' feeds directly into the final track 'Caves-Outro'. This is just vocals and piano, again completely subverting expectations. This was such an unexpected and peaceful way to end things, and if anything ended the Love & Rage stronger. It turns what is a constant head-nodder of an album into something very thoughtful. Probably the favourite track on the album.
Punk gets a bad rap for being just noise. Love & Rage is a great example of it being anything but. There's a level of involvement, acknowledgement and again, community, that features throughout. Shooting Daggers are a trio with an iron-clad purpose and ethos. The energy and chaos of Shooting Daggers has been well documented, but Love & Rage is very gripping for different reasons.
Love & Rage from Shooting Daggers is out on 16 February via New Heavy Sounds and available on all good streaming platforms. Shooting Daggers also have numerous dates in the south of the UK in March and April, as well as an appearance at Manchester Punk Fest, and then 2000Trees in the summer.
