ALBUM REVIEW: Gimp Fist – Losing Streak (Breakout Promotions/Sunny Bastards)
Two years after the splendid one-two that was 2022’s two-albums-in-a-year (Isolation and Unification), Gimp Fist are back with their 10th studio full-length.
The street-punk trio from Bishop Auckland, County Durham, are approaching 20 years together and showing no signs of slowing down, with songwriter Jonny Robson as irked as ever by the state of the world around him.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Gimp Fist is the high standards they set, and they manage to reach them again here. These fellas have never made a duff record.
As well as penning catchy choruses, Jonny knocks out a mean guitar solo, with his drumming brother Michael and bassist Chris Wright pounding out a furious backbeat.
Losing Streak is 15 slices of fast and furious working class punk rock, with not a throwaway song in sight. I’d heard a few of them live, and they fit into the set like a glove. Most of them will have you singing along by the second chorus.
Things kick off with How Come?, and for a moment you think you’ve put on the wrong album, as a slow drumbeat and dirty big slow riff fill your speakers. Give it 30 seconds though and normal service has been resumed, and Gimp Fist are off and firing on all cylinders.
I won’t go into each song in detail, as everyone will have their own favourite, but Community – already a part of their live set – is an early standout. Jonny asks “hey, whatever happened to community, in today’s society?” as he wrings a wonderful gutsy tone from his Gordon Smith guitar.
The title track Losing Streak is another up tempo banger about being down on your luck, while Heat Of The Streets, the shortest song here at just 1:35, is a super slice of punchy oi!
A great riff, dirty bassline and thundering drums punctuate Hypocrisy, about people who don’t practise what they preach, while Less English is a scathing putdown of the sort of right-wing patriots who ‘want their country back’. You can hear Jonny’s contempt as he sings: “A cross on your chest, a mouth full of pride, you couldn’t be less English if you tried.”
Angry anthem
Society’s increasing reliance on prescription drugs is the topic of Sertraline – an antidepressant often used to treat depression and PTSD, and again the anger is palpable as Jonny sings: “You know the score, we can’t take any more.”
The pace slows a little with Blind, which is about coping with life’s trials and trubulations, while Whites Of Your Eyes is right up there with my favourite Gimp Fist songs of recent years. It calls out politicians – the “devils in disguise” – who have cost the country its shipyards, mines, factories and safe streets for children to play, and a warning that the time of reckoning might not be too far away.
A way of life
Born And Raised bemoans the loss of innocence, when kids spent their time playing with friends outside instead of gazing at screens, while most punk fans will identify with the sentiments of lead single Seventeen: “Yes, it´s a way of life, not a passing phase/There´s a part of me that forever will remain/17, yeah 17!”
Another slice of classic street-punk from the Bishop boys then, and I can’t wait to hear more of it live. 8.5/10.
- Losing Streak is available now on limited edition vinyl (four different variants), CD and digital from Gimp Fist’s Big Cartel store HERE), or from the band at gigs, including next week’s Rebellion Festival, where they play their traditional Saturday teatime slot.
