Album Review: Arc Flash – Carbon Copy

Arc Flash have been generating a buzz throughout the scene thanks to endlessly energetic shows and their own unique brand of space punk and mutant pop intensity, now Arc Flash have released Carbon Copy, their full length debut, that was unleashed on the 31st March via High Dive Records, the album is available is on vinyl, on milky white/black split and traditional black variants, and on CD. Arc Flash are a band that mix punk, noise, surf, garage and indie, and to be honest pretty much everything else from the dark underbelly of rock ‘n roll that lurks away from the mainstream.

Carbon Copy is an album that sounds like a combination pf punk rock and the high energy side of the indie scene of the 8o’s that’s played through a time warp to the 1960’s, the production is sparse and spacey, something that matches the tone of the album. The riffs on every track are the hyperactive bastard sons of the original 60’s garage scene, everything is frantic and distorted, and the vocals are echoey and add to the feeling that this is an album born of a potent cocktail of recreational substances, and that’s just fine by me, although this is no throwback to a bygone era, there are obvious influences in the mix but this album is a singular and original creation.

Arc Flash have created an album of twelve monosyllabic titled cuts of fuzzy garage influenced spaced out punk rock, with the exceptions of Ohmmeter and Tuff, that shift into a more experimental psychedelic zone, this is raw fuzzed out garage that captures the spirit of the original first generation of bands that were given the term punk, and later acts such as The Mummies and The Cramps, that’s all performed with a suspicious urgency. If you have a love for any of the fuzzy lo-fi bands that have been spawned since the dawn of rock ‘n roll then I’d recommend you acquaint yourself with Arc Flash.

You can order Carbon Copy on CD and vinyl here