Laurie Vincent and Isaac Holman of Slaves are a post-ironic punk band; their modus operandi being that if you’re a pair of millennials from Royal Tunbridge Wells (or, indeed, from the 21st century in pretty much any capacity) you cannot seriously attempt to re-create the genre without seeming anodyne or pointlessly derivative. So they don’t. Instead, their debut album, 2015’s Are You Satisfied?, saw the duo deploy punk tropes with equal amounts of archness and genuine enthusiasm. They manage to pull off this attitude with aplomb – it’s how they were able to record a punky cover of Skepta’s Shutdown that was both funny and too gratifying to actually be a joke. And yet, on this second record, that posturing is over-shadowed by tedious sonic abrasion. There are still moments that amuse – such as a 45-second hardcore punk song called Fuck the Hi-Hat, and the nicotine-stained new wave of Steer Clear – but ultimately they seem too few and far between. Chugging clatter and repetitive shouting is still offensively dull, even if they don’t really mean it.
