Text : Koen Ruijs
Translation : Bente van der Zalm

Bad Nerves takes you to a sweaty squat with a crowd of partying punk fans

After the release was postponed, as for a lot of albums this year, the debut album of the East-London punk band Bad Nerves is finally released today. But it hasn’t been too complicated for the band to fill these past years. They played at the Eurosonic-Noorderslag Festival in the Netherlands last January and they gave an extended impression of the new album by releasing no less than ten singles.

The ‘self-titled’ debut shows a mindset that comes down to ‘action speaks louder than words’. The high speed rushes past you like a fleeing bunch of partying young people on their way to eternal freedom. This is all covered by a leather jacket with pins of The Ramones, Jay Reatard and The Clash. This mood is immediately set on opener ‘Can’t Be Mine’. This opener also prepares us for second banger ‘Mad Mind’, a track that gets a melancholic feeling in the verses. The whiny Bobby Nerves seems to be very bored and is longing for something that will give him the kick of energy to push the gas pedal at its fullest for a bit. Because before you know it, you’re breathing your last breath. Life is too short to sit around doing nothing and being bored!

For the rest of the band life seems to short to pause for a moment to take a breath, because at ‘Baby Drummer’ the quintet doesn’t seem to know how to stop and just pounds on. With Baby Drummer the band expresses a longing for something new that is about to happen within the by now traditional guitar music. The line ‘Nice to meet you baby drummer’ sketches a curious established order that sees a newcomer enter their familiar circle. The suspicion that the band tries to introduce themselves in this way to the international punk scene immediately looms up by hearing this song.

Bad Nerves takes you to a sweaty squat with a crowd of partying punk fans. You want to throw your beer in the air and drown yourself in the swirling moshpit, to drift off home in the middle of the night with torn clothes, but a satisfied feeling. Life is too short to calculate everything. Take action, go and enjoy. And mostly, don’t pay attention to other people’s opinions. Because before you know it, your time is up.

The debut album of Bad Nerves is available on all big streaming platforms. It’s also available on vinyl and CD at Suburban Records.