There are songs that play in the background, and there are songs that grab you by the collar and refuse to let go. Essex band, Mad Morning, have released their debut single, ‘Painkiller’, and it falls squarely in the latter category. From the first hit of the drums, it feels less like you’re listening to a recording and more like you’ve been dropped into the middle of a live show, the sweat, the noise, the electricity. It’s chaotic in all the best ways.
The track is a storm built from jagged riffs that crash into each other, drums that thunder with seismic weight, vocals that cut through like lightning. The frontman doesn’t sing so much as he howls, defiant and unrestrained, channeling the kind of raw urgency that defined the best of grunge and post-grunge. Yet, threaded through that grit is a melody that sticks with you.
Mad Morning sounds like they’ve arrived fully formed, with no interest in playing it safe and they certainly aren’t blending into the background. With ‘Painkiller’, Mad Morning show themselves off as bold, unrelenting, and impossible to ignore.
