Shreds. Step Up
Shreds. ‘Floorshow’ album review
Well, wow. What a difference a year makes. Where last year’s debut (Step Back) featured a similar line in snappy hardcore, it was hampered by some weird, out-of-step (heh) vocal mix. Let’s just say that the Sheffield foursome have sorted themselves out, and then some.
With fifteen songs in around thirty minutes, FLOORSHOW may zip by in a whirlwind of unabashed hardcore, but with samples, songs flowing into each other and a snap-tight performance, it’s clear this album has been assiduously crafted. So, with Step Back‘s vocal problems ironed out, we get the full measure here; think Riot City ravings over US-style hardcore, or youth crew with a singer who drinks. The pace is all GO!, with gang shouts galore and a filthy-mouthed frontman. Freeloader fits an Outer Limits sample into its minute-long intro and Friend Or Foe is scintillating hardcore, as well as a mid-life crisis Institutionalized: “bullshit made up lies, that they say about me, sitting here, drinking beer, Just let me be.” See? Selling False Hope‘s slow build is a little GBH, Genocide has some wickedly mosh-worthy metallics and Bond, the unity song is, aptly, a finger-pointing marvel. The highlight for me is True Story, not least because it leads with a Stand By Me sample. The mid-paced, driving verses are a wonder and, coupled with poignant lyrics and judicious placing of gang shouts, make for an affecting experience. They throw in some great stop-start fastcore on Everyday Itch, metallic chugging on Give Myself A Heart Attack, increase the vocal mania on Maggots and the way the anxiety-inducing riffage of Number One morphs into the all-out shouty hardcore of Deadweight slays.
Lyrically, much of this stuff is righteous, if a little cliché. That said, maybe there’s only one way to cover the horrors of genocide: “FUCK YOUR BOMBS! FUCK YOUR GUNS! FUCK YOUR WARS! FUCK GENOCIDE!” (Genocide). Actually, yeah, fuck me and my jaded sensibilities. There’s the expected stuff on back-stabbing friends (Freeloader and Friend Or Foe), punk unity (Bond), the grift of religion (Selling False Hope) and it’s good to see animal experimentation for vanity getting an airing (Laboratory Conditions). It’s True Story though, a powerful paean to losing a loved one to drugs that, as well as being a musical highlight, takes the lyrical top spot:
Bust out the gear
Its cold over here
Would you like another?
Brother?
Rip off a chunk
Grim reaper junk
As time passes
Ashes
Went to your service
Felt quite nervous
I saw your mother
Brother
Had a gift for me
Your subhumans tee
Will you take another?
‘Nother
As time passes
It marches on
In my memories
You’re always young
(True Story)
FLOORSHOW is everything I wanted that first album to be, and more. The production is chunkier, the performance tighter, more natural – it actually feels like they were in the same room at the same time, sweatin’ it out. This is exactly how a hardcore album should sound; breathless, tight as fuck, with a fistful of twists. A blast.
Released September 1st 2026 by Engineer Records on vinyl, CD and digital.
Review by Steve Midwinter for Personal Punk.
Comments