London-based punks Stingray are among the bands associated with the New Wave of British Hardcore (NWOBHC), an increasingly venerable moniker for a style that was “new” a decade ago, when outfits like Arms Race and Violent Reaction were putting out records on Quality Control HQ. Stingray’s music has a similar sense of bluster and even more layers of muscle; there’s a lot of metal, both thrash- and death-, in the sound. Even moreso than the earlier bands, Stingray closes the distance—aesthetic, if not historical—between the NWOBHC and the NWOBHM. Frontman Tin Savage would look just fine clad in a tattered Saxon t-shirt.
Some listeners might demur: hasn’t there always been a decidedly metallic quality to hardcore? See the arc of the Bad Brains’ music (hardcore’s most influential band, excepting perhaps Black Flag), or in the UK, that of Charged GBH. Some accounts of hardcore’s emergence argue for a kind of refining process, in which punk’s interest in properties like speed and snarl were intensified, making them sonic ends in themselves. Early tunes like the Bad Brains’ “Pay to Cum” or GBH’s “Knife Edge” provide compelling evidence.
But we should keep listening, to important songs like “Big Takeover” from Bad Brains’ transformational self-titled ROIR cassette or “Big Women” from GBH’s “No Survivors” 7-inch. Neither song would have been possible without records like Black Sabbath’s “Symptom of the Universe” or Motörhead’s Bomber. Stingray carries on in that fashion, with plenty of flash, nasty guitar soloing and riffage that conveys a terminally bad attitude.
Those necessary, negative qualities noted, Enemy is a very pleasurable record. For this reviewer, the EP’s last song, “Failed Harvest,” is its best. The overall sensibility gravitates toward death metal, replete with dive-bombs, throaty gruffness and a winning breakdown about two-thirds of the way through. There’s a surfeit of brawn in the song, and throughout the record, but somehow no fat. Like the best of the NWOBHM, assembled deep in Thatcher’s England, Enemy is lean and mean, hard music for austere times.
