Who?
Wet Nuns are a guitar and drums two-piece from Yorkshire wonderfully labeled ‘blues metal’, and performing with a similar stark set up to The White Stripes, if louder and a little less charming than the Americans. Hailing from Sheffield, Robert Graham (guitar) and Alexis Gotts (drums) are loud and strained, stating their diverse influences as “women, booze, death and Enya“. As you do. They sound like they’d be one hell of a party.
What?
Rough around the edges, throat-destroying metal vocals layered over some largely pulsating chords, occasionally diluted by plodding moments that give an essential ounce of balance to the party hub. They’ve gained such a reputation back home that the duo are about to launch their own festival, fittingly entitled ‘Detestival’. It’s the vocals that give Wet Nuns their edge, exploding into grating, bitter choruses and violently party-loving lyrics.
Wet Nuns videos in particular make quite a statement. Throttle sees a trip to the tattoo parlour turn violent and ends with organs being thrown about the place and the disposal of the body (not one for MTV, perhaps – they’re still playing music, right?). Heavens Below is all capes, mythology and satanic rituals. The blues edge is there, though: this is certainly not a band for the hardcore metal lovers, more one that flits closely enough around the edges to add some serious thrust. There’s also soul, even if it a soul that comes across just a little like the devil already whipped it off the shelf before they started writing.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/users/4732512″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”250″ iframe=”true” /]
Why bother?
It’s different? While part of you might scream ‘Andrew WK’ on first glancing at Wet Nuns videos, they’re far darker in their moody direction, and there’s a fantastically violent edge that threatens to explode into something truly dangerous live. They’ve already dropped into Ireland once, playing that appropriately dingy and dungeon-esque venue ‘The Academy 2’ last year. As profiles rise, expect them to step up a gnawing, angsty live reputation.
And the flip side?
If you don’t have any love of music’s dark side, this isn’t going to work for you; let’s face it, a band entitled ‘Wet Nuns’ are always going to be the preserve of a certain type of music fan, and it’s not the pop lover. The guitar-led edginess, combined with a sense that they’v
e risen to the head of a scene that spawned Arctic Monkeys (if you’ve never been, Sheffield has a lot in common with Dublin music wise, it’s ace…) might not override the oddities for everyone, but for us the oddities that are the fun.
Catch them…
There are a handful of UK tour dates over the next couple of months, including a free show in Leeds. Check them out here. For now, you’ll have to fly, though. Watch this space, for festivals, we suspect they might pop up in an Irish field or two this summer.
Links: Website | Soundcloud | Facebook |
Up & Comers is jointly produced fortnightly by Goldenplec and 