Savages – Fuckers/Dream Baby Dream

Almost a year to the day after Savages excellent 2013 debut album, ‘Silence Yourself’, and with no follow-up in sight, the band decided to mark the occasion by releasing this live twelve-inch featuring an incendiary live recording of Savages’ vicious, anthemic non-album track Fuckers, written during the sessions for Silence Yourself. The record captures the full sonic intensity of Savages’ live performance on the progressively wigged-out, 10-minute-plus Fuckers, as well as their mesmeric side on a cover of Suicide’s timeless Dream Baby Dream. Some new material would have been nice, but as a snapshot of this stage of Savages’ career, this is a pretty decent artefact. The recordings from The Forum are good, the instruments and vocals sharp and the live power of the band is captured as well as live recordings ever manage to do. As ever, brilliant bassist Ayse Hassan carries the songs along while the spiteful Gemma Thompson throws petrol into the flames to feed the conflagration. Vocalist Jehnny Beth is a master of the pained, us-against-the-world vocal, while Fay Milton crashes plenty of metal without going off the rails. Savages were at the top of their game as a potent live force; I just hope that during their current four year break, they are not burying themselves too deeply in a hole of their own making. The best way to show the fuckers is to soar and not to hide behind the barricades screaming in defiance. Blow them away. Something massive next, please.

Ripped from the download code that comes with the 12” to MP3 @ 320kbps

Savages; Fuckers/Dream Baby Dream

A.      Fuckers

B.      Dream Baby Dream