Tokeo Unleash New Single “Bleak Moors”

A cathartic triumvirate of punk, rock and rap, Manchester’s Tokeo hail not from the craft beer bars and gleaming tower blocks of the increasingly gentrified city centre, but from the forgotten mill towns several miles north. More specifically, Rochdale. Fittingly, their music is also a far cry from the predictable indie that populates much of said city centre’s venues. Instead, Tokeo harbour an aggressive edge and a bleakness that could only stem from growing up in an area in decline, where the main incomes are government handouts and criminality. Optimism is in short supply and the only hope for the towns’ youth is to get out and stay out. Old curses and old wounds fester. Where the future was once made now only ruins remain.

Bleak Moors is the band’s fittingly titled next single. Brooding and ominous, mounting towards an incendiary chorus, there’s nothing optimistic about it. Written in the shadows of the dreary south Pennine moors from which it takes its name, Bleak Moors is as aggressive as it is angular, and finds Tokeo at arguably their most primal, but also their most vital. Indeed, at a time when the costs of living are soaring, and the UK government is nothing more than a self-spiralling shit show, the outlook is bleak, and while Tokeo might not offer any respite from that, they certainly provide some much needed catharsis.