Three-piece Psych Grunge band Brooders have released their self-titled E.P. Brooders.

By  Jane Howkins.

Considering that the band members are from the Nottingham, Derby, London, and Leeds, it’s impressive that Brooders have managed to find the time to practice together, let alone record and release a mini-album.

There’s certainly a lot of potential displayed on Brooders, with some interesting ideas and guitar riffs going on. There’s a very heavy 1990s grunge/fuzz-box influence present throughout, with the band’s sound playing on that by introducing their own elements into the genre. It’s great to hear some originality in a genre that has now become rather stale (especially with so much of the post-grunge released in the past couple of decades), and it’s something we welcome from the group. At times it does get a little generic, but with a genre like this that’s to be somewhat expected, and it’s obvious that they have at least tried to be a little different than the rest of the crop, so kudos to Brooders for that.

It’s when they stray from their template that this band are so fascinating. Two tracks of note are Blue Eyed Prince and Thrill Killer, both of which bring a more modern sound to the grunge influence, without going down the post-grunge route (Brooders are thankfully more like Nirvana than Nickelback). The riffs on these two songs are really memorable, and whilst very frenetic, the two bands we actually thought of when listening to them were Franz Ferdinand and Muse, so it’s clear that there’s more going on here than first appears.

The only real issue we had with this is that the production isn’t that great, and could be vastly improved upon. Part of that is most likely purposeful in order to provide a more raw and ‘authentic’ sound, but there are times when this mini-album sounds more like a demo than anything substantive, and that could be a risky move if not changed for future releases.

Their self-titled E.P. is their first release together but it hopefully won’t be their last, as whilst very raw, there is a lot of potential here. With a little more polish and some different ideas, Brooders could well be onto something.