The Summer War – The ‘Cult Of You’ EP.

The Summer War – Manchester, England, United Kingdom.

For our previous work on The Summer War – Click Here.

Cult Of You is a release I’ve wanted to sit down and write about for a little while now, released on the 12th April of this year, it is Manchester boys The Summer War’s second EP release and arguably their best yet, but we’ll get to that shortly.

For those unaware, since formation in 2011 the band have released to date, two EPs and three singles each showing the three piece’s progression from their roots in the UK Pop-Punk scene, to producing some of the most stand-out and strongly driven Alternative Rock on the UK underground.

\\Cult Of You//

We’ve seen the forerunner of this release before, ‘Walk With Kings’ shows a welcome vocal interplay between the strained and harsh and the defiant yet welcoming vocal styles.

While musically, a softer side of the band is shown with what you assume will be the songs entirety with it’s soft Indie sensibility, before The Summer War’s slow, cumbersome and soaring Alternative Rock makes it’s entry stronger than ever.

‘When The Moon Said Goodbye To The Sun’, even though only two tracks into the listing is a contender for the best of the release even before you’ve heard the following three.

Lyrically it’s pulling at your heart strings, as well as showing the band musically at their darkest, heaviest and most driven. As much as I enjoy The Summer War, I am finding them hard to fault from a critical and objective perspective at this point.

With most of the track composed as a build up, the welcoming vocal interplay that even goes as far as a light-scream more than once, is amplified more and more as the track continues, with strong and welcome mid-pace (almost) Punk orientated rhythms and guitar work at the tracks centre before the band’s cumbersome slower rhythms again play you out.

‘The Garden’ is the longest on Cult Of You, with a duration just over five minutes, you’d expect the band to experiment musically within this time, which in reality is not so far from the truth.

More Indie stylistics and strong song-writing shows further the skill of this three-piece, with musical nods to Brand New, who are cited as a strong influence on this release. ‘The Garden’ is another progressive track, immensely satisfying in it’s abstract heaviness, in complete contrast to what comes next in the soft and reserved ‘Novemberish’.

It’s isn’t long before the heaviest and most intense of this five-track EP comes to fruition and closes it all in, ‘On A Cross’. The tracks opening lead is anthemic musically in the way much of modern Punk music is and before long another huge chorus is upon you.

‘On A Cross’ is the correct end to such a stand-out EP, that is the product of two years of hard work paying off, with everything that was noteworthy about Keep Up We’re Moving On bigger, better and then some, from a band that are only going grow.

Cult Of You is a masterpiece of UK Alternative Rock, be sure of it, so sure that you swiftly download it right this very second.

Find the band and Cult of You below:

• For updates head to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
• For the bands music so far, head to bandcamp where Cult Of You can be purchased for £0.50 and the rest of the band’s catalogue is up for Free/Name Your Price download.
• For further streaming and and videos, head to SoundCloud and their Youtube Channel.

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