Utopia plus Those F**king Snowflakes

UTOPIA

Building upon their debut album ‘Stalker’, released in 2021 and named after the 1979 Tarkovsky film, UTOPIA have upped their game for their second release ‘Shame’.

Their debut album, put together during the pandemic with guest musicians, featured the extreme drumming talents of Billy Rymer (The Dillinger Escape Plan), Baard Kolstad (Leprous), Lee Fisher (Fawn Limbs), Si Blakelock (Tangaroa) and Simon Peter King.

Now featuring a fixed lineup, the original members of John Bailey on guitars, Chris Reese (Corrupt Moral Altar) on vocals and Arran McSporran (Virvum/Vipassi) on fretless bass are now joined by Jay Walsh (Eartone 9) on drums.

With Stalker described as “the type of album that shapeshifts from one minute to the next, encompassing everything from grind, death metal, doom, jazz, and even some progressive rock, ensuring that listeners are in for a wild and challenging experience…comparable to the experimental madness of Psyopus and Dillinger Escape Plan alongside Spastic Ink or Behold the Arctopus, but with a bit more emphasis on jazz and prog melodies which sets Utopia apart”, their second album Shame looks to build on the foundations of Stalker, but with a more cohesive sound throughout - while still pushing themselves beyond the instrumental complexities of the first album. Taking their songwriting and technical skills to the limit, Shame is not for the faint-hearted but rewards those willing to step up to the plate with repeated listenings to unravel the complexities within the compositional layers.

THOSE FUCKING SNOWFLAKES

Those Fucking Snowflakes are a vibrant clash of lefty noise, jazz snogged math rock and angreh post-hardcore. A band formed as a means to scream out the dread and horror faced in these terrible times of our modern society. From the current mess of the UK political system to the intolerance of, well,  everything. From race and gender to such simple items as Greggs releasing a Vegan Sausage Roll, the band are shouting about it backed with a tight unique sound and occasional off kilter humour.

Despite the name they received a generous amount of airplay on 6music thanks to Tom Robinson which led to them releasing a 10" vinyl EP on John Robb's 'Louder Than War' label. They split in 2022 due to feeling a bit tired and reformed with a new line-up in 2024 after a good nap and some floradix.