Review: Pleb ‘Grease Trap’ EP
Pleb don’t ease you into Grease Trap; they hurl you straight into the meat grinder. Hailing from Leeds, UK, the duo of Delia Fraser and Steve Myles deliver their debut EP on the independent label Human Worth, and it instantly stands out for its raw, claustrophobic intensity.
Recorded live with no overdubs, it preserves the immediacy and character of the performance, while extreme distortion and feedback add weight without becoming overwhelming.
It’s rough around the edges, but that’s precisely what makes it work: honest, unfiltered and unafraid to embrace the noise. The first minute and eighteen seconds of Clods Of Shit And Bone are enough to floor you. There’s no introduction, no invitation and certainly no time to brace yourself; Pleb simply grab you by the throat and drags you through the mud. Guitar, drums and vocals collide in a ferocious assault of sludge, punk, noise and extreme metal that feels almost impossible to escape. Before you’ve processed what happened, the opening track is over, leaving the impression that something has punched through you rather than merely played from the speakers.
And that’s just the beginning. Eight tracks, barely thirteen minutes – an astonishingly short time to inflict so much damage. My first instinct was early Napalm Death, specifically the primitive violence of the Scum era. There are also echoes of Sore Throat, Carcass and Extreme Noise Terror in Pleb’s refusal to offer comfort. But they don’t simply recreate those sounds; they drag that grindcore mentality through sludge and distortion, arriving somewhere darker, heavier and filthier. This is less about conventional songs than a succession of attacks, arriving one after another with barely enough time to breathe. Brevity is part of Pleb’s arsenal – extreme music doesn’t require more time, more instruments or greater virtuosity. Sometimes less space and fewer avenues of escape is exactly what’s needed.
The EPs title Grease Trap becomes increasingly apt as the record progresses. Everything feels greasy, clogged and rotten: the riffs seem coated in grime, the guitars grind against themselves, and feedback fills every crack, and even the music’s more recognisable shapes are slowly consumed by distortion. Beneath it all, the tone is frightening, like something alive and unhealthy, dark and almost subterranean, giving the recording an ominous presence you feel as much as hear. Guitar and drums frequently merge into one filthy mass, with Myles’s voice tearing through the centre of it.
And what a voice. Calling what Mylesdoes ‘singing’ feels almost too polite. He sounds as though he reaches down into his guts, grabs something dark and poisonous, and violently drags it up through his throat. His vocals are guttural, fierce and genuinely mind-bending; they don’t sit on top of the music but erupt from inside it, less a vocalist than a human alarm going off inside a burning building. There’s no polished extreme-metal theatre here; it sounds involuntary, as though the music itself is forcing the voice out, reinforcing the early Napalm Death and Sore Throat comparisons: there’s something wonderfully primitive about how Pleb reduce everything to impact – hit, grind, scream, pulsate, stop. Yet the sludge brings a different kind of weight; the intensity comes not from speed, but from a riff grinding at exactly the wrong nerve.
Guitar, drums and vocals collide in a ferocious assault of sludge, punk, noise and extreme metal that feels almost impossible to escape…
The Bruises Mean It’s On the Way Out keeps the assault moving without letting the listener recover, while The Eyes Melt First sounds like a warning arriving too late. Put It Back and Evolutionary Roadblock continue the barrage, the latter title fitting for music inhabiting a world breaking down while pretending to move forward. The Streets Aren’t Reliable In The Slightest carries that instability outward. Throughout, everything consumes something else: the tone eats into the guitar, distortion eats into the riffs, and the tracks devour one another in rapid succession.
The final two tracks, You And Me Baby Ain’t Nothing But Cannibals and Belly Up, both no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds, carry the same frenzy as everything before them. There’s no gentle landing: Pleb drag you further down, into vomit, foul stenches and whatever else has been left to rot at the bottom. It sounds disgusting. It is disgusting. And it works because the duo never try to make their ugliness attractive, hiding behind elaborate arrangements or technical showmanship. They make the music physical: the guitar sounds damaged, the drums attack rather than merely keep time, and Myles screams as though something inside him is desperately trying to get out.
That’s what makes Grease Trap more than just another noisy underground record: it doesn’t merely sound extreme; it makes you experience extremity. Thirteen minutes shouldn’t feel like an endurance test; this does. And strangely, when the final sound disappears, you want to put it on again.
What Fraser and Myles have created isn’t easy to forget – a surprisingly deep bruise: the opening assault, the guitars dissolving into abrasive noise, and above all the screaming from somewhere far below the human throat. Grease Trap doesn’t politely ask to be noticed; it takes you by the throat, drags you inside, lets your eyes melt first, then pulls you down into the grime and leaves you there, covered in grease, vomit and foul stench. Thirteen minutes later, it spits you back out. If you’re lucky. Welcome to Pleb. Welcome to the sound of visceral, guttural, fierce noise-drone.
Label: Human Worth
Band Links: Bandcamp | Instagram
Scribed by: Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Caccamo
