Action Plan
Stendhal / Beauty Scars

Energy. I'm an open lover of anything containing it. Take Lucozade for example, when you're ill, hungover or merely in need of a boost, you just open the orange-tinted bottle and end up shitting yourself through glucose abuse. Legendary.

Much the same thing happened when I opened my copy of London-based Action Plan's debut single and placed it delicately in my CD player. I was instantly covorting like some sort of drunk hippopotamus across the plains of Hyde Park and swigging yet more grog to continue my journey. In less than three minutes 'Stendhal' powers through intense rhetoric, laid over the top of pounding rhythmic prowess and the thickly laid guitars that beat you into submission wrap around your ears and generally fuck up your day. In the honestly best possible way.

Flip-side 'Beauty Scars' plods a little more than its brother track, but the band's wanton destruction of dynamics and texturing is once again showcased, exploding in chorus after chorus of glorious noise and choral chanting, before returning to the perfectly structured verses that hold the whole song together.

It would be wrong to claim that what Action Plan are doing is unique or original, it's a meld of the Manic Street Preachers, twelve great punk records and the deep layering of My Bloody Valentine played all at once and orchestrated by an army of animals; but it's fucking glorious.