EP: “Life’s A Beach” by Death By Shotgun

Death By Shotgun are one of Bournemouth’s newest bands after forming earlier this year and despite only being together for a short time they have their debut 5 track EP recorded and released. The EP was recorded in conjunction with the Southampton record label Suicide Notes with George Daly engineering and producing it at the Ranch Production House in Southampton.

It is available on download from their band camp site and on analogue cassette for all those people that still have a Walkman’s or tape players in their car. The band have only so far play a handful of gigs around the region and are gaining some positive feedback from their early performances. The band were originally just an acoustic duo with just Dom and Matt performing gigs together. The song writing duo decided their songs were worthy of a full band sound and approached George and Filipe to join adding the rhythm section.

The ep kicks off with “Forget About It” and the band show from the start they can produce sweet melodies and catchy lyrics. They combine electric and acoustic guitars to great effect with some well delivered vocals. The second track entitled “Hate My Brain” is a fast paced earworm, that grows on your more with each listen. “New Year’s Eve” is a tune of anticipation and also looks back at the past year. It features some cleverly put together festive chiming style guitar parts.

“Surf’s Up” is possibly the best of this collection, an uplifting 3 minutes or so that features more great melodic guitars with some spot on foot tapping rhythms. For the last track “Repeat” things slow down with a simple but effective acoustic number taking things back to the band’s original beginnings. It is clear that they can write decent relevant tunes and they have a good understanding of the music creation process. It’s a promising start for this new band who show here that they have plenty of potential.