Album Review: Broken Stories by Nelson Savage

New Edinburgh based band Nelson Savage have had a very busy 2019. Back in April, they released their debut self-titled EP which was bloody excellent. Not wanting to slow down, just five months later the five piece released a second EP named Broken Ghosts. I was extremely impressed with this productivity but was anxious to see whether or not this new release would match up to their first. There's only one way to find out!

Broken Stories begins with the song Twisted. The track begins quickly with a rapid drum roll, some upbeat guitars and some dreamy "ooohs" that make you feel involved in the song from the start. When we hit the first verse and the question "how did we become so twisted?" is asked, I was very keen to see where the song would take us. Twisted is a melody-driven pop punk song with some shoegazey qualities. The track has these great moments of urgency that add plenty of emotion to the song and kept me hooked throughout. The second of the three songs on Broken Stories is the more powerful Holes. Holes immediately bursts into life with a crunching start – it's really quite startling. Musically it's again very up tempo with the vocals doing most of the work with the melody. When Holes reaches its middle section however, it begins to slow things down a bit allowing the band to build towards the big finale complete with some superb backing harmonies. The final song is titled Is It Halloween Yet? I loved the interesting high pitched guitar picking that opens the song – it's different and a great way of attracting the listener’s attention. This is perhaps the catchiest of the three songs on Broken Stories with the chorus quickly implanting itself in your mind. It might just be because of the theme of the song but I kind of feel as if the track has somewhat of a horror punk tone. I'm sure there's an Alkaline Trio influence here.

This is another strong release from Nelson Savage. The band seem set to make a big impression on the Scottish punk rock scene for the remainder of the year and going into the next. Hopefully they'll make the same impression on the fine folk south of the border as well.

Stream and download Broken Stories here: https://nelsonsavage.bandcamp.com/album/broken-ghosts

Like Nelson Savage here: http://www.facebook.com/nelsonsavagetheband

This review was written by Colin Clark.