Underdog

“Black”

Underdog are a three piece band from Hampshire playing a brand of rock that straddles the indie/metal/grunge interface. The core trio of Jon Bramley (bass, guitar and lead vocals), Steve Brian (drums, backing vocals) and Andrew Chirgwin (rhythm guitar, backing vocals)  are augmented by a number of musician friends, notably lead guitarist Stuart Jee who plays on six of the album’s eleven tracks.

The trio perform angsty, intelligent songs with Bramley’s well enunciated and unmistakably English voice prominent in the mix. You can hear practically every word without recourse to the lyrics printed on the CD insert. Not that this detracts in any way from the band’s power, the music is lean and hungry with plenty of bile present in both the singing and the lyrics. Underdog don’t waste their words, this muscular but intelligent rock evokes memories of Husker Du and Therapy?, bands who explored the worlds of damaged relationships and the fragility of the human psyche and tried to make sense of it all.

Much of the album is in classic power trio mode with plenty of chunky riffing but songs like “The Eye” and “Black” itself introduce an acoustic element and provide some welcome dynamic contrast.
The playing is highly competent with rumbling but surprisingly sophisticated bass riffs, punchy, powerful drumming and a wall of guitar sound courtesy of the joint deployment of rhythm and lead.
Pete Brown, also one of the additional musicians, does a good job in the producer’s chair and the whole album sounds highly professional.

The eleven song programme of material is all written by the core trio and kicks off with the nihilism of “Timeshift” and “Waste Of Time” and progresses through “The Eye” and the bitter “Kathy”-this is emphatically not a love song.

“Eternal Wait” grapples with the reasons why we’re all here, “Then I Should” and “Black” tackle more personal issues and emotions. If there’s a fault with the album it’s the unremitting self obsessed miserabalism of the lyrics, “Find A Place” and the scabrous “Glad To Be Gone” offer no let up from the doom and gloom. Only “Start Again” offers a hint of positivity but it’s quickly annulled by the closing “PF” which adds the threat environmental apocalypse to the now familiar litany of incipient personal meltdown.

Not that these comments should be seen as being overly critical. I like my music to have some jagged edges and dark corners and I like this band. There are a whole batch of good tunes here and the band avoid the twin perils of the “demons and wizards” posturing of metal and the fey winsomeness of indie. Nirvana are clearly a role model for the group and those earlier Husker Du/Therapy? comparisons are meant to represent a compliment. The dark nature of the album’s subject matter ensures that “Black” is aptly named.

I don’t really represent Underdog’s target audience (this album came to me through a local connection of one of the group members) but I can imagine my adolescent self being a big fan of the band. I still retain a residual affection for this type of rock and on the evidence of this recording Underdog are pretty damned good at it. The album was released in April 2010 and the Underdog trail seems to have gone a bit cold since. However their website http://www.underdogworld.com suggests that they have now added a permanent lead guitarist, Dave Oxlade, to the ranks. Let’s hope we’ve not heard the last of Underdog, this is an album that shows considerable promise and deserves to win the band a cult following.

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