If you like Faith No More, you’ll love CO.WAR.DICE by Marmozets.
CO.WAR.DICE is a full-throated, fist-in-the-air return that reminds you exactly why Marmozets were so exciting in the first place.
Two sets of siblings from Bingley, Yorkshire who arrived on the scene with an average age of fifteen and enough energy to power a small city, Marmozets’ debut The Weird and Wonderful Marmozets announced them as one of the most formidable young bands in British rock, with 2018’s Knowing What You Know Now earning five stars from Kerrang! and cementing their reputation. Then COVID arrived. Vocalist Becca and guitarist Jack married and started a family, day jobs became a reality, original member Will departed, and the band went quiet for eight years. Now they’re back with a new chapter, and you can hear that these aren’t the same teenagers who exploded onto the scene but adults who have returned to music out of a burning desire to escape mundanity with gratitude, resilience and defiance in every single track.
CO.WAR.DICE is an empowering, optimistic, joyful record and Marmozets deserve every success off the back of it. The album announces itself in a gloriously theatrical fashion with a spaghetti western whistle before the drums arrive getting faster and faster, making it absolutely clear that this is a band that has no interest in playing to a click track. A wicked surf riff kicks in and Becca is off wailing, hollering and screaming with mad time signatures, breakdown after breakdown and the manic grinning energy of Poly Styrene, sounding furious and ecstatic at the same time. New York follows as a more straightforward alternative banger with terrific Smashing Pumpkins-style harmonics. Cut Back is another massive single filled out by big glittering synth lines that make the guitar riff sound even chunkier. The band are all exceptional players but they frequently opt for simple block chords, leaving the maximum possible space for Becca to go absolutely nuts.
Swear I’m Alive slows things down into moody gothic ballad territory, epic and drenched in reverb demonstrating Becca’s remarkable range. She can hop between vocal styles within the space of a single line and the band shape themselves around her with instinctive understanding, building the perfect platform for one of the most extraordinary voices in British rock to soar and sculpting every arrangement to give her the perfect moment to detonate. Running With The Sun In Your Eyes is another driving banger, and Dandy is a wonderful and unexpected highlight, just acoustic guitar and Becca singing with tenderness and a behind-the-beat looseness that’s deeply hooky. After the sweat and fury of everything around it, it’s unforgettable.
Like Last Night sounds like Reading & Leeds, and this band could honestly slay any festival on earth right now from Glastonbury to Boomtown and probably even Bloodstock. Mes Désirs builds to a final spine-tingling howl with the same massive-lunged powerhouse quality of Skin from Skunk Anansie, You Want The Truth is super fast punk, and Flowerz brings a Hayley Williams quiet-to-loud dynamic with soft tender verses giving way to a belting chorus.
Keep Going, Darling closes the album across seven and a half minutes stretching out into a tremendous jam designed to give both the band and their audience the opportunity to dance and twirl and scream together until the lights come up, and it’s the perfect ending. CO.WAR.DICE is an album about seizing your moment with defiant resiliance and the courage to keep on going, with passion and optimism front and centre, and talent serving the feeling rather than the other way around. These are great songs with a now-or-never energy behind them that lands hard.
Marmozets didn’t go quiet by choice. COVID arrived and canceled our entire sector, and CO.WAR.DICE steps back onto the stage and says “WE ARE BACK!”. The album sounds like British rock festivals in the 2000s, edgy enough to make you scratch your head and infectious enough to make you throw your arms around a stranger built for good-hearted fun in a field with the sun beating down. Marmozets sound like they were inspired by those festivals, and they now sound made to headline them.