Black Rain – Black Rain
Reviewed by Allister Spence • 24 June 2025
In the spiralling lexicon of post-punk revivals, few debut albums summon the ghosts quite like Black Rain, the eponymous release from Sunderland’s three-piece of the same name. They enter the fray not with reinvention but with resurrection—resurrecting unease, urgency, and the taciturn swagger of throbbing basslines under sodium glare. This is music made for flickering streetlights and cracked windshields: equal parts Joy Division pallor and Stranglers’ sneer.
The album splits itself, artfully, between the embalmed sterility of studio control and the beautiful mess of stage abrasion. The five studio tracks lean into architectural minimalism with bleak elegance. ‘Inside’ opens with brooding intent, Scott Hays’ bassline coiled like a slow fuse as a cracked vocal intones with hypnotic resignation. Josh Cowey unspools panic, chanting: ‘Can’t Think, Can’t See, Can’t Breathe, Can’t Speak, Can’t Run, Can’t Hide, Can’t Feel, Can’t Find,’ before arriving at the resigned epiphany: ‘Can’t Dream of Better Times.’
More propulsive is ‘Save Me,’ the band at their most Stranglers-esque—jittery, paranoid, and threadbare. Mick Christen’s drums drive the song forward beneath a low hum of synths before Josh Cowey’s jagged guitar and droned vocals cut through with snarling desperation, pleading to be saved from himself.
The standout, for me, is ‘Satanists,’ a blistering screed of political anger. Cowey reels off a litany of societal ills—homelessness, underpaid nurses, wilful indifference—and the blood-stained hands of governments. His guitar tears through the track while Hays and Christen pound beneath it. It’s short, furious, and desperate for answers.
‘Shotgun’ marks a shift from the political to the personal, arriving on a bouncing bassline and staccato drumming. It’s a love song for a fractured romance, with Cowey repeatedly asking, ‘How did it come to this?’
A shimmer of guitar and Hays’ ominous bass lead us into ‘Fear,’ returning us to political terrain. Cowey voices disbelief at the news cycle and calls for unity—an anxious plea for survival through solidarity.
But it’s in the live material—recorded at Sunderland’s The Bunker on 23 March 2025—where the band unbutton their collars and bare their teeth.
‘Shadows Cry’ lurches toward apocalypse, dragging its bass-driven carcass through three-and-a-half minutes of warped paranoia and regret. ‘Broken Words’ haunts with the sound of betrayal and quiet desperation. Who among us wouldn’t still take back the one who lied, if it meant not being alone? It begins slowly, then breaks into a gallop of raw catharsis.
‘I Suffer Alone’ deepens the descent. Cowey’s shimmering guitar leads us in, while Christen’s drums tap a subtle, near-military cadence. The track crescendos in a wall of sound reminiscent of early Siouxsie and the Banshees—particularly ‘Placebo Effect.’
‘Dust Tubes’ prowls in on cascading guitar notes, haunting the derelict corners of city streets, where ‘hope flickers’ ‘in this forsaken place.’ In the end, it retreats into a longing for a lost time—for somewhere that once felt like home.
Make no mistake: this is a dark record. It speaks to the unease of our times, to collective fears and private insecurities. But it’s also powered by muscular musicality and defiant spirit. You can trace the lineage—Joy Division, Gang of Four, The Stranglers—but Black Rain avoid mere imitation. What they offer instead is a kind of elegant possession. They don’t mimic the past. They haunt it.
For fans of Joy Division, Gang of Four, The Stranglers, Pere Ubu, Public Image Ltd, Fugazi, Bauhaus, Magazine, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
available from 14th July from:
BANDCAMP https://theblackrainband.bandcamp.com
INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/the_black_rain_band/
SPOTIFY https://open.spotify.com/artist/0bQG0K40fWr4EaMs0seDxB?si=z7aDs4WDT5OOskeH01ZmNg
APPLE MUSIC https://music.apple.com/us/artist/black-rain/1808657118
VINYL PURCHASE https://elasticstage.com/blackrain
CASSETTE PURCHASE https://violethourtransmissions.bandcamp.com/
Black Rain play the forthcoming dates:
26/9 - FIRE STATION - SUNDERLAND
4/10 - CARPE NOCTUM - LEEDS
1/11 - SHADOW FACTORY - WHITBY GOTH FESTIVAL
