Photo: Amy Hill
Hold your fucking horses end of year list makers! Total Control are set to drop a new album on Friday. Laughing At The System, a new 12 EP released on Alter Records, the London label run by Helm's Luke Younger, sees Al Montfort, Daniel Stewart, James Vinciguerra, Mikey Young, and Zephyr Pavey exploring more of their fraught and taught punk rock.The opening title track "Laughing At the System", that you can hear now on the Alter Bandcamp page, is one of two songs that bookend the new record.As the Alter bandcamp explains, "The scattered mania of the opener is an unsettling beginning, with cascading madhouse-riffs somehow finding a ricocheting unison. The closing part has the familiar head-charge of Total Control's most gnashing moments, with the guitars balancing the equation between running-too-fast and drinking-too-fast in one queasy commitment. With a brilliantly acerbic wit, we're implored to gather that there's some equivalences here. And it's this kind of impulse that's kept up throughout the 12".Last week the band played a small and intimate show in the outer Melbourne suburb of Belgrave, home to a steam train called Puffing Billy. This week they play at Meredith Festival alongside acts such as ESG, Pissed Jeans, !!!, and many more.'Laughing At The System' is available on vinyl and digitally Dec 9 through Alter.Total Control play this Friday at the sold out Meredith Festival.
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