"I can see a major system error in you / You think one plus seven, seven, seven makes two / If your story ever, ever, ever came true / Can you keep it together, ah?" That's the starting line of The Marmozets's track "Major System Error." It's such a juicy and viciously dramatic string of phrases, all of which fill me with an explosive nemesistic zeal- so much so that I'm willing to bend one of the many unwritten rules of this blog in order to cover it.* We've all encountered someone in our lives, some short-circuiting creep who needed to have a few inches shaved off of their pride, and lines like these, delivered with the passion and courage, really do the work of making one's righteous accusations stick while leaning in close enough to flip the kill switch on the bastard. It's a prickly species of lyricism that is nearly extinct in 2024 (at least in rock music), one that is equally directed at facilitating a parable of bad dealing with bad actors, defending one's self from ego-depending manipulation, and empowering the listener to dance in a manner of free-spirited flight that only their body and spirit truthfully comprehend. About 10 years ago, you could still find a dozen bands on the radio that could pen a lyric that strips the copper-coated nerves from a malfunctioning narcissist over a floor-pounding groove in about as much time as it takes to lay down 2/5ths of a chorus, but it's seemingly a lost art now, taken over by cloistered indie and pure pop artists with more or less uneven and middling results. Even when their strengths were more widely shared though, Marmozets still stood out from the troop of their peers, especially on their second LP, 2018's Knowing What You Know Now, on which the jittery head-rush "Major System Error" is the fourth, nail-through-heart driving, track. In their day, the British pop-punk and garage band cultivated a genuinely precocious train of roller-coaster chord progressions, air-tight rhythms, down-tuned guitars, polished production quality, and gripping vocal performances. They first broke onto the scene when the majority of their members were barely 18 back in 2007 and gained the attention of the British music press through their chaotic live shows and vicious stage presence. On Knowing What You Know Now, The Marmozets take the raw material of their 2014 debut Weird and Wonderful and use it to sculpt something sleeker, angrier, and deadlier. These are rock anthems with fangs and a deathwish, with enough hooks and natural charism to charm the pants of the devil himself. Opener "Play" breaks in with a teeth-rattling beat and layers of danceable raucous riffs, “Habit” has gluey guitar hooks and a chorus that is pandemic levels of catchy, “Meant to Be" combines juicy vocal harmonies with vengeance-seeking guitars, and “Lost in Translation” swings and stomps like the Bride of Frankenstein on a bender. Knowing what we know now about how sterile and desiccated mainstream and radio rock has become, would it be too much to ask The Marmozets to come swing back into action? It might be me going out on a limb, but I'm going to say that it's not.
Roadrunner Records... they might not be Acme, but they still pack a BANG.
*I usually avoid covering releases on major labels... and Roadrunner is definitely one of those. I honestly can't keep track of which major they're even a subsidiary of now, nor do I truly care...
