Peer Pleasure Sink Their Teeth Into New Single 'Meat Inside'
The Irish outfit's latest single is a sweat-soaked collision of garage rock, punk and blues that feels destined for chaos in the live setting.
It’s dirty, delirious, devilish and downright delicious. What else could I be talking about but the most recent single from Irish band Peer Pleasure. ‘Meat Inside’ comes crashing down to earth from their debut album ‘Unvetted Males’, out at the back end of the year. Active from 2022, they’re a band whose name is said with such admiration, you’d be daft not to pay attention.
‘Meat Inside’ is a title as beautiful as it is greasy and was first uttered by the band as a description of Belgian pastries. It begins with a sample taken from a traveller group chat that revolves mainly around the sentence: ‘I’m getting bags of coke, I’m getting loads of beers’. From the get-go you should know what sort of band you’re getting into - if anything goes awry you shall be held at full responsibility. Then you’re thrust into some Stooges era guitar sleaze, heavy hitting ear-splitting filth. The song is cradled with a deep chug cut up with bluesy style licks and moments of screeching delirium, sometimes sounding like a psychotic Roadhouse Blues rendition.
Despite Peer Pleasure slotting cosily into the whole Windmill, South London, post-punk mania, the new single feels classic rock n’ roll in a way I haven’t heard since ‘Special Ape’ off Fat White’s 2014 debut album. There’s that distinct constant build throughout the track, an unrelenting promise of something even more fervent. It’s a real sweat-drenched culmination of garage rock, punk and blues that takes all the best from acts like Iggy Pop and Lime Spiders while maintaining a stand alone identity. Vocalist Brandon Murphy says that ‘Meat Inside’ “is a melting pot of our various influences throughout the course of the band, it’s as much Fat Whites as it is Thin Lizzy into Kyuss or Beasts of Bourbon.”
Its intensity is the least interesting part of it, however. I’m hooked on the vocal display of Murphy who slips into this frantic whine in between the raspy swing of it all. It’s a “substance fuelled and ultra frustrated” performance of sheer madness. The repeated demand of ‘crack me open, take a look at the meat inside’ should leave you feeling violated but it’s strangely entertaining in its “sex bereft” desperation. Is it a demand? A fantasy? A threat? Whatever it may be, you can’t help but agree by the end of the song. Murphy describes ‘Meat Inside’ as “a messy song that channels the energy of a dirty night out where someone’s fallen out, someone’s missus is gone home early annoyed and that one lad is about to start a fight again.” It feels biblical in its portrayal of the senseless depravity we’ve all experienced at some point. The biting nature of the lyrics and instrumental only amplifies how fun it actually is. It’s the sort of song that as soon as it begins to spill out the speakers, mass hysteria is instantaneous and unavoidable.
As a whole, Peer Pleasure’s latest offering is a dirty, thrashing and often carnal display of everything the band has to offer. In between the vulgar hedonism is mind-melting guitar and an energy so undeniably belligerent, I fear for those who will experience it live.
Photography By: Dylan Scully