Sons hail from Melsele, Belgium, a country that also produced one of our favourite bands, heavy blues rockers Triggerfinger. Like Triggerfinger, Sons play high-energy music with a lot going on, except Sons are more at the punk / garage end of the sound spectrum. We suspect the marketing will be aimed at fans who like the dirty-arsed guitar “Peaky Blinders” sound, bands like Idles and Fontaines DC (even the grungier end of Arctic Monkeys) but Sons have a sense of melody and fondness for a simple beat that reminded us of glam rock, mostly Sweet but also the Glitter Band and other glam rockers of that era.
Opener Succeed is solid and loud, with guitar as air raid siren guitar, with the next track, Nothing, perhaps having echoes of Subways’ Rock n Roll Queen. The title track is neither sweet nor sounds like a boy, but is a chance to admire the rumbling, aggressive bass guitar; in Hot Friday, the bass sounds like a swarm of angry bees, chased by pounding drums.
While melodic, it’s all fairly fast and furious but drifts into a bouncier and simpler beat with track seven, Another Round, which has a Hives-like chorus. Shadow Self has all the traits of an Idles track but we can only think of the Sweet, a feeling that peaks in closing track Pixelated Air, slick and fast with a feel of Ballroom Blitz.
It’s very good and an enjoyable album. Sons were apparently playing local bars before winning the De Nieuwe Lichting (lichting is what thunders comes with in the Dutch-speaking lands) competition in 2018, hosted by Studio Brussel and went from playing the occasional bar to spending the next year playing 70 festival sets across Europe.
Sweet Sons
