Album Review: Chubby and the Gang “Labour of Love”
review by Rickey Frankel
Release: Labour Of Love [EP]
Band: Chubby And The Gang
Label: Partisan Records
Score: 8/10
Last year Chubby And The Gang released their massive genre-bending sophomore album, The Mutt’s Nuts. The album contains a bunch of hardcore-meets-oi! anthems and other tunes that range from blues to singer-song writer. It’s was clearly a massive undertaking for the band and it paid off quite a bit. On Valentine’s Day 2022 Chubby And The Gang released a follow-up EP aptly named Labour Of Love, and it’s a three-track continuation of the band’s experimental take on punk and hardcore.
The track “Who Loves Ya (Coup d’état)” is a very catchy tune that has a1970s pop rock vibe mixed with Chubby And The Gang’s contemporary punk sound. From the whimsical lyrics about falling in love to the simplistic, yet anthemic chorus one could easily see this song as possibly being a cover from that decade, but amazingly it’s not. You can hear the band’s more updated sound jump into the mix with the lead vocalist’s gruff singing and the high-treble guitar taking center stage.
“Twice Shy” is a much more straight forward Chubby And The Gang tune that is pretty reminiscent of a bunch of their more hard-hitting tracks on The Mutt’s Nuts. The guitar is still set to a very high-treble, distorted sound and the drums relentlessly come crashing down throughout the song. The band’s vocalist impressively pushes his voice to the point where it goes from gruff to quite throaty. Of the three tracks “Twice Shy” is the one that fans of Chubby And The Gang hardcore tunes will probably enjoy the most.
The third and final track, “Ain’t There No One?” has a hardcore punk sound to it too, but the vocals are much more melodic compared to “Twice Shy.” Plus, the guitarist swiftly pounds out the blues-based chords sort of in the same vein as some of Teenage Bottlerocket’s more powerful tunes. All of this eventually leads into choruses where the vocals get very measured and the guitar chords get unleashed and ring out.
Fans of Chubby And The Gang will undoubtedly really enjoy Labour Of Love. It is a great, condensed version of what the band is all about sonically. That being said, if you are just finding out about the band (especially on this side of the pond), then I would go back and listen to their two full-lengths first, Speed Kills and The Mutt’s Nuts, and then come back to this. This EP is a killer bolt-on to The Mutt’s Nuts. It just shows that Chubby And The Gang continues to be absolutely on fire as of late and that they are a band very much worthy of the punk scene’s attention.
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About the Author
Denise Borders 39, Los Angeles. Denise founded PWV in 2008 and remains the primary manager and photographer/videographer. She is not secretly obsessed with Joey Cape.
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