Run Walk / Health

Run Walk
Health
(Holy Roar)
****
Rest in peace Run Walk, Run WALK! or whatever the damn you were called – for by the time you read this, the ferociously hardcore, drum kit ‘n’ bass guitar welding duo will have slayed their final live audience.

It’s been a short but fruitful existence that’s seen the twosome being championed by Paul Artrocker’s New Heavy Sounds club nights and compilations, as well as slotting into the broader heavy scene led by Pulled Apart By Horses, Hawk Eyes et al. And now they hath croaked.

Except what’s this – an album? Good Lord Jeremy, like a cremated grandpa they’ve left an urn of substance behind with which to remember them by, and as you’d expect it’s rather darned good.

The record boosts up its batteries to an anthemic and valve-heating intro (called ‘Intro’, fairly enough) before the fun begins with ‘Blank Canvas’, a typically aggressive piece of angular thrash – and the first moment where you go ‘like dude, did you say there’s just TWO OF ‘EM?!’ ‘Black Dreams’ and finale ‘Under A Rock’ offer the band at their best, both of them gun-to-mouth, top speed expressions of rage, delivered like a puncture to the adrenaline gland. The latter tune also hints at where Run Walk could have gone had they continued to thrive: the middle section steers off the map completely, and feels as grand as two planets attempting to shag each other in some epic CGI scene from Transformers 5, shortly before the more familiar distortion and rage kick in again.

Ah yes, the rage. Naturally a certain openness to hardcore thrashings is required to fully relish the panicked screechcore of ‘Warm Skin’, the acid turd-storm of ‘Lose All Your Fear’ and the militant psycho buggery of ‘Dead Room’, but then if you don’t want to play with tigers, don’t get in the cage pussies!
Ric Rawlins