So it kind of goes without saying that none of you reading this came here for commentary on the Coronavirus pandemic. This is a guitar magazine – you came here to escape the world outside these glossy, artistically laid-out pages. And why wouldn’t you? The world is pretty f***ed right now.
But therein lies the power of music: it can be an escape from the horrors of the real world, but it can also be a tool to help one navigate those horrors. By highlighting and pondering on, critiquing and appropriating those horrors, they can become easier to digest. Such is what makes the cerebral, polarising grit of Tropical F*** Storm so endearing – they’re here to hold our hand throughout the apocalypse.
On album number three – the snarky and acerbic, yet simultaneously – the band mine the throes of sociopolitical panic, environmental disarray and, yes, the pandemic we’re wading arse-deep through, trying to make sense of it all via blunt, furious energy, jazzy experimentalism and plenty of spine-ratting six-string chaos.
