Jaime C

Tried to sleep, failed due to the neighbour's yappy wee dug.

However, the cat decided I looked cozy.

Metal/hardcore crew Ithaca were mentioned alongside 2 other UK based bands who were making their breakthrough at roughly the same time as them: black metal band Svalbard (also very good) and death metal mob Venom Prison (who were okay, but also the singer outed herself as a transphobe weirdo in the past year or so).

One can assume this was mainly due to metal's fucking weird obsession with grouping any band lead by a woman together, despite the fact that they don't sound that similar. But they also shared some thematic similarities that stood out from the usual stuff you'd expect from death and black metal especially, leaning towards leftist causes like anti-fascism, anti-racism, workers' rights, and others, which makes VP's singer's turn even more odd/disappointing.

Anyway, Ithaca's 2nd album fucking great and a big step up from their solid debut. Riffs for days, and vocalist Djamila Boden Azzouz is just incredible with her voice having an incredible bite to it while still being clear enough to hear every word she says. The production on it is clean and razor sharp too.

Also, the cat approves.