Andrew Danso

The red line between being messy by nature and the mess being purposeful couldn’t be wider. The Rabbits press notes indicate an instinctive carelessness. Aligning them with a dirt-rock individualism, placed on top of a reckless production, which exists to flaunt their ‘musical nous’, pushing out the grains of muddy low end distortion and lost subby percussive undercurrent. It’s all quite untrue. Sure, they sound bonkers, raw and unhinged, but every inch of this record has been schematically planned, chock-full of direction, barriered into one stylistic genre. They say punk; we say lo-fi, sludgy doom.

Musically, Lower Forms is a fairly intense experience, that’s far more extreme than ‘dirt-rock punk’ lets on; far more dark and edgy, than careless and messy. Throughout its length, there is little melody involved, with a downtuned assault placed on emphasis, rumbling along like a hornet of tanks crossing a bailey bridge. Passages nod toward the dirt-rock revival spin, albeit very briefly and when The Rabbits decide to add a coherency to their sound (which means slowing down a little) it rubs off weightless and dull, lacking an impact the grumbling had. The Rabbits can crawl, get on all fours, and run. They can’t walk, and when they try, thankfully the leash is often right around the corner.

7/10 Powerplay issue #130