But enough of the packaging, and on to the contents. On the piece of paper in front of me, Die! Chihuahua Die! are described somewhat breathlessly as “a chaotic mix of riff heavy high energy garage rock influenced hardcore punk’n'roll”, and for once I can’t find fault with the press pitch (unless we’re going to talk about the urgent need for some hyphens in those compound pairs, but we’ll save that for the next meeting of the Grammar and Punctuation Pedantry Association, of which I am chairman and sole voting member in this constituency). The underlying aesthetic of Bitch Songs is amphetamine velocity and schizoid ranting, wild-eyed and backed into a corner, with a chair-leg in one hand and your mother’s purse in the other; furious, and maybe a little frivolous, but a whole lot of noisy dangerous fun. With song titles like “Stuck Pig”, “Action/Fuck/Action” and “Blow Goat”, you’ve got a good idea of what’s coming at you here; nine songs, twenty five minutes, four and a half gallons of sweat (yours and many other people’s).

To be less metaphorical about it, Die! Chihuahua Die! have a kinda compressed QOTSA guitar tone playing metallic hardcore’n'roll riffs, Stooges chord sequences and occasional bluesy lead licks beneath raging brawling vocals; the drumming has an angular funkiness to it, and is firmer than a freshly picked cantaloupe. Bitch Songs isn’t big, and it’s probably not clever either, but it’s good stuff – ferociously loud party music to drink beer and stagger about to. If they perform anything like they sound, I suspect the biggest problem Die! Chihuahua Die! will face is being banned from every venue they play, as said venues get smashed to pieces by the combined antics of band and crowd. And should they pass near enough to me next time they’re on the road, I plan to be right down by the front of the stage, wearing nothing but spray-on denim cut-off short-shorts and gleefully trying to grab the mic stand in order to throw it javelin-style at the bar staff*. Care to join me?

[ * Legal disclaimer - all acts of violence suggested by this review are entirely metaphorical, and should not be taken as indicative of the reviewer's usual behaviour in licensed music venues. Probably. ]

There’s some real hybrid vigour in Prior To the Fire’s genetic make-up. Priestess are channeling some Sabbath, of course, but then who isn’t? Alongside those Iommi riffs and proto-thrash licks, however, are bright melodies and vocal hooks from the hey-day of seventies hard-rock, coupled with the equally old-fashioned (but, in my opinion at least, much missed) attitude that says “hey, we know this is just Dungeons & Dragons theatre with amplifiers, so why don’t we just concentrate on making it fun to play and loud to listen to?” Job done.

The downside (or upside, depending on how you look at it) is that there’s not a great deal to be said about Prior To the Fire, other than that it is old-school heavy metal with a couple of modern tricks up its sleeve, and that it is good. Priestess aren’t going to change the landscape of rock music, but they’re going to soundtrack the best Friday night sing-along commute you’ve ever had.

Some of those artists appear on Pledge: A Tribute To Kerbdog, a covers compilation that Rhodes hopes will shine a light on a dearly-loved (if little-known) band. Now, I’ll freely admit to not being seated on the bleeding edge of British underground alternative music (would that I had more time to invest in becoming so!), but most of the artists here are probably less well-known than Kerbdog themselves, and the ones I do recognise are hardly household names. Frank Turner is probably the star at the top of the tree, and it’s nice to see Jamie Lenman (frontman of equally-underrated and prematurely-defunct peripatetic UK popcore geniuses Reuben) cropping up on a table of contents, although Dave “InMe” McPherson is not quite so welcome a guest, at least not in this household. The remainder of the contributors are a roster of names overheard or alluded to but not yet encountered, and their contributions are predominantly picked from On The Turn rather than Kerbdog’s eponymous debut… so let’s see what this motley crew have made of Kilkenny’s finest.

Faithful reproduction appears to be the order of the day. Cars On Fire’s clean, crisp and slightly shrieky take on “Pledge”; Left Side Brain’s Helmet-esque reworking of “Severed”, Days Of Worth’s “Didn’t Even Try”, Lenman’s roughly caustic version of “Mexican Wave” (with a Baker Street-esque sax solo that works better than you might expect)… these aren’t the work of late-comers thinking they can improve the material, but people paying respect to their forebears.

There are a few more adventurous interpretations, though, most notably Frank Turner’s fingerpickin’ busker’s shuffle through “Sally”, which makes much of the tune’s underlying angst and confusion, and Ocean Bottom Nightmare turn “On The Turn” into something ADHD-angry, falsetto-silly and (quite possibly) armed with a rusty Stanley blade. The afore-mentioned McPherson, much as I expected he might do, turns the epic “JJ’s Song” into a whiny acousti-emo complaint, while the ludicrously-named Hold Your Horse Is manage to turn “Secure” into shouty and badly-produced pub-punk through no method other than being themselves… of all the bands here, they’re the one that I’ll probably be freshly prejudiced against rather than in favour of. But two out of thirteen is a pretty reasonable proportion of duffers, all told.

Ultimately, I suspect Phil Rhodes will actually achieve the inverse of what he wanted to do with Pledge; this collection of covers is far more likely to introduce old Kerbdog fans to new artists than the other way round. But much as I’d love to see the Kilkenny trio more widely recognised for their excellent and underexposed output, I think sending new listeners toward younger artists with their chips still in the game is the better result. There are certainly a few new discoveries here that I’ll be looking out for in the future (the endearingly chunky Mike Got Spiked, for instance, and the low-slung Stations), and I’ve enjoyed being reminded of these long-term favourites that got buried by the relentless expansion of my music collection. Recommended for die-hard ‘doggers, as well as all fans of heavy music with strong melodic snap.

The plodding instrumental title track opens the album with a slower than usual momentum, but it lasts only 59 seconds before blurring into “Daddy’s Little Disaster”, the first in a seemingly endless stream of beautifully recorded punk trudge. Only “Thundersludge” makes it past three minutes – which is neither a criticism nor a selling point – and the whole thing sounds so sonically uniform that it might as well be a single half-hour song. And that ain’t punk at all.

The only defining characteristics of Pride Of Nowhere are the opener, the singer and the slight slowdown of “Thundersludge”. The Smoking Hearts seem devoid of anything more than perfunctory composition skills, preferring loud guitars, rehearsal hall drums, barely audible bass to state their case. And their singer, of course, who is the most interesting part of the equation. ‘Lethal’ (for that is his moniker, albeit one slightly less ridiculous than that of second guitarist ‘Nobba’) has a halfway decent voice, a throaty growl rather than the usual US faux-punk yelp, and it reminds me of someone I just can’t place.

The problem is twofold: firstly, the songs aren’t really up to scratch. Secondly, tattoos, guitars and shouting don’t make you rebellious. If The Smoking Hearts really want to ‘be who they want to be’, then they need to be someone a damn sight more interesting than they are if they want to shift units. I imagine they’re a great live experience, but their songs don’t really transfer well into the studio.

To be honest, my favourite part of the entire album is the basic but striking design and photography for the package; they make black-and-white-and-gold work well for them. The Smoking Hearts have a poor name, and a hint of Senseless Things, Motorhead and early Therapy? in their punked-up rock and roll sound; their greatest problem is a lack of memorable material and a heaving mass of entirely similar bands.

Close, but nothing special.

It’s quite a thrill to listen to a piano in this sort of musical context, and – in my experience – rare to do so; some of Tori Amos’s more heavy material comes to mind, as does a percentage of Trent Reznor’s output, but that’s about it for easy comparisons, and even they don’t really reflect the angular yet fluid intensity of Amen. The drums and vocals sound are deployed much like you’d expect a modern post-hardcore outfit to use them (complex rhythmic changes and driving drum patterns locked to the bottom end, plus psychodrama confessionals and slasher-movie rants that would make Alec Empire jealous), but the wide range of frequencies usually eaten up by swathes of distorted or effected bass and guitar is instead populated with quasi-classical arpeggios and rolling, chiming staccato basslines. End result: an unusual amount of reverberating sonic space for the vocals to wander around in, much like some escapee inmate from a mental health facility wandering a well-manicured park in central Paris. The texture’s unfamiliarity is its primary appeal.

The instrumentation may be novel, but the songs? Not so much – the strangled angst and confusion of the lyrics and the complex architecture of the tunes are pretty much dipped straight out of the My Chemical Zeitgeist playbook. If you’re tired of histrionic twenty-somethings shrieking on about their ongoing disillusionment with modern life, Amen isn’t going to cure you of it, and if you didn’t think it was possible to rework the old standard “In The Pines (Where Did You Sleep Last Night?)” (here simply named “My Girl”) in a more wrist-slashingly overwrought manner than the late Kurt Cobain once managed to achieve, be prepared to be set thoroughly straight.

That said, there are some more experimental pieces on Amen (like the audio portrait of a mental breakdown in a thunderstorm that is “I Am An Island”, or the temporal fragmentations of “Kill Me Twice”), and My Own Private Alaska have a refreshing sound thanks to their unconventional instrument choices. It’s fun to hope that a minor wave of piano-driven hardcore bands might emerge in their wake; maybe one of them will really smash the mould. But as vanguards of a new sound go, well… you can colour me moderately impressed.