There are few bands that manage to channel the heyday of punk infused gutsy rock and roll quite like Ming City Rockers do on their debut full-length. Led by the likes of The Hives, or early material from The Strokes, the four-piece from Immingham – nicknamed Ming and notorious as the home of Ian Huntley – dig up the past, revelling in their nostalgia, yet cramming in enough attitude to propel Ming to city status.
Of course, Ming City Rockers wouldn’t exist if Immingham was a full-fledged city. Tales of excess – booze and drugs – alongside working class disorder and despondency drive this record. It’s a soundtrack to anarchy. A soundtrack to a riot that happened forty years ago, yet with enough immediacy to make you think we’re on the brink of it all over again.
There’s more than a little punk influence, and it’s this that sets Ming City Rockers apart from contemporaries such as Palma Violets – a rather lacklustre outfit to be championing a band with such spiteful grit. Easy comparisons can be made to Iggy Pop and his hedonistic Stooges; their conviction and stage-presence seeping into Ming City Rockers’ material.
‘Ming City Rockers’ is an angry, forceful and ultimately passionate record. Clocking in at just under thirty minutes, it’s a high-octane powerhouse of nostalgia – one pushed to the forefront by the comparatively young age of the band members, ranging between 18 and 22. There’s enough force here to encourage a belief that these four lived through the emergence of punk, and feel just as angry about its catalysts as activists did then.
Turn ‘Ming City Rockers’ up loud, and watch the establishment crumble.
BEN TIPPLE