Brighton’s conveyer belt of brilliance continues, and Slung might be its fiercest new product. In Ways is a debut album that already feels classic, arriving fully-formed, purposeful, and rich with identity. Katie Oldham’s vocals are breathtaking, switching between sensual melodies, screams, and titanic choruses that would make Bonnie Tyler proud. The riffs are huge, sludgey and grungey, and the emotional scope of the album is massive. One moment you’re getting your face torn off, the next you’re in a wide open space where alt-country and heartbreak balladry swirl together with incredible depth.

In Ways manages to feel expansive while keeping the songs lean and punchy, rarely crossing the four-minute mark because of the band’s intuitive use of space. There’s a heavy alt-country influence running through this record - a genre built for heartbreak, and here it becomes a raw, expressive vehicle for personal reckonings and grungy swagger, feeling gutsy, vulnerable and vital with top-class performances across the board. On Nothing Left, the lyric “What kind of person could think I deserve this, and what does that make me?” lands like a freight train, the moment of full-body realisation that you’ve tolerated something you never would’ve let a friend endure, questioning your own self-worth in the wreckage of seeing it all too late. The guitar tone is thick and huge, the basslines are groovy and melodic, and the drums roll and tumble with precision and flair, all hanging together beautifully and forming the perfect storm beneath Katie’s howling vocals soaring like an eagle. Slung have created a great rock record which is also a deeply sophisticated emotional document, mapping out the terrain of heartbreak in ways that feel both fresh and devastatingly familiar. It’s extremely rare to hear a new rock band this tight, this emotional, and this electrifying on their debut.