The Shadracks – From Human Like Forms

Damaged Goods Records have a long association with garage punk outsider Billy Childish, the label’s latest releases welcomes you back into Damaged Good Records: The Next Generation with The Shadracks sophomore album, From Like Human Forms, that features Huddie Shadrack, the son of the UK garage punk legend. The band also feature Rhys Webb (The Horrors) and Elisa Abednego, together the trio claim to play music from “37.3 years in the past 33.7 years into the future”, although personally I’d say that the bands roots stretch back another 20 years to the garage bands that populate the Pebbles and Rubble compilations.

The Shadracks new album follows on from their 2018 self-titled debut album, and stays true to their eccentric path. Aside from Billy Childish producing the album, from the first moments of opening track, Don’t Let Go, it’s clear that the Childish genes have not skipped a generation. This is an album of stripped to the bone raw garage punk that’s blended with outsider elements from across the decades. Every track on this album could only have been made by The Shadracks, however they simultaneously manage to give each track it’s distinct character, often swiftly switching mood mid song.

The Shadracks can certainly tell a good story, as evidenced by their claim that former band member Elle Meshack “retired from The Shadracks to peruse a career as a Poly Styrene impersonator aboard a Tahitian cruise liner: SS Honolulu Baby”, and their sophomore album backs this up with fourteen cuts that span the garage punk universe and beyond. Fans of the likes of The Creature Comfort, The Soft Boys, The Coathangers and The Marked Men, and for those whose tastes lie towards the more left field bands from the worlds of garage punk, rock ’n roll, psychedelia, indie, punk and post punk, will find The Shadracks world to be one that manages to be simultaneously alien yet comfortingly familiar.

You can purchase From Human Like Forms via Damaged Goods Records