Album Review: Strangers With Guns, All Pleasure Is Just Relief

A wise man one crooned “The world is fucked/And so I am” and that’s an observation that Dublin-based bruisers Strangers With Guns will most certainly agree with. Featuring members of Kiss My Acid and Val Normal in their ranks, this proverbial power trio trade in titanic riffs and caustic, cautionary tales of navigating the hellscape that is modern life. Their just released new album All Pleasure Is Just Relief sees them rage against the machine with the best of them and is loaded with cathartic pit anthems in the making.

If you’ve got records by the likes of Tad, Paw and the Butthole Surfers in your collection, Strangers With Guns are set to be your new best friends. At their best when they’re turned up to 11 and being as subtle as a headbutt, highlights include the suitably muscular ‘I Am Henry Rollins Now,’ and the frantic and feral, Wildhearts-referencing ‘Phuque.’

7/10

Strangers With Guns play INDIE22 in Mitchelstown, Co. Cork this Sunday, July 31.