Lead (ii) Nitrate - Our Last March

Hear The Track Here

MmmmmmOK, here's another artist who's gonna make me work for my (no) money. Lead (ii) Nitrate (great name btw) are a punk rock band (ed: eh??) from - if all places - Singapore. The instant conclusion to jump to is that they must be related - as it were - to our favourite Asian punk rockers Shorthand Phonetics who, as you know, come from Indonesia. Is this the start of the punk rock scene Asia style?? You won't find any information on Lead (ii) Nitrate on their Soundclick page - although you will find 23 songs there. Take a look at their myspace site and you'll find that Shyfool, Terence, Somedane, Brian and Bob Doom with contributions from Eleazar and Hairil is wot makes all the noise.

So, pin yourselves up, work up a nice gobful of spit and let's pogo...

Not sure what punk rock threads Lead (ii) Nitrate are picking at in their minds but I hear classic Sex Pistols vocal histronics over a MUCH more sophisticated musical track than any punk track I ever heard. In terms of getting the style down, I shouldn't think this crew had much to worry about. The only slightly worrying thing I found is that the music rattled along at a thousand Mach per minute leaving everything else to come puffing away behind, a fashionable ten minutes late. It's only in the outro where things come back to realistic speeds for human survival that you really notice how decent the preceeding 3 some minutes were...

Oh, it's a rough (full strength sandblasting anyone??) production but punk was supposed to be that way, wasn't it and Shorthand Phonetics have certainly not been hurt by it. Lead (ii) Nitrate's version is a lot more hard core - even though a lot of the musical track has more in common with guitar metal than punk rock - and you'd really have to like the genre to get anything out of this track other than earache. Personally, I liked a great deal of punk rock and of course rock itself has become a lifetime obsession, so it's a given that I would like those parts of this track. It isn't - in any form - an o-my-god-you-gotta-have-this moment but given the right material, ya never know.

Now, come here and let me give you a nice Mohican...