As fruitful as it can be for a British band to cultivate their sound so that it sounds more or less identical to the dozens of others doing the rounds, trying something a bit different certainly pays off. That’s the case with Manchester trio Forty Four Hours on their debut EP ‘Only Just Holding On’.

There’s the basic skeleton of everyday Brit-rock present, but the meat on the bones is comprised of completely different stuff. Soaring hooks are replaced with sharper, more acute riffs, while arena-ready choruses have been overthrown by scattershot syllable-nattering that’s somewhere in delivery between David Draiman and Sting, both at their worst enunciating-wise.

It may sound all over the place on paper, but it makes a lot more sense when you actually hear it. ‘Difficult’ and ‘The Time And The Place’ are both prime examples of this, extrapolating the more angular end of Brit-rock past its de facto conclusion and into something a lot quirkier.

That’s not a criticism either. Alongside Press To MECO, ‘Only Just Holding On’ marks out Forty Four Hours as one of the UK’s most forward-thinking but immediately accessible new bands, something that should hopefully see bigger things come for them in the future. For their debut release though, these four tracks hint at much bigger ideas to come, and a band to definitely keep an eye on over the next year.

4/5

‘Only Just Holding On’ EP by Forty Four Hours is released on January 22nd.

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Words by Luke Nuttall(@nuttall_luke)