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\u201cEvery song we write, we are trying to write a hit,\u201d Flats<\/a> vocalist Daniel Devine has previously claimed. If this is the case \u2013 and Devine does seem to have graduated from that early Manic Street Preachers<\/a> school of quotability over accuracy \u2013 they\u2019re going about it in a funny way. Better Living, Flats\u2019 34-minute debut album, is a commendably cacophonous outpouring which contains not the slightest germ of future commercial gold, instead cycling unsteadily through subgenres including anarcho-punk, New Orleans sludge metal and 1980s Scandinavian hardcore.<\/p>\n Normally, playing music like this restricts one to a scene committed to parity, low entry fees and avowed rejection of \u2018corporate rock\u2019 and the like. Flats, on the other hand, toured with Klaxons<\/a>, The Horrors<\/a> and Morrissey<\/a> within a year of their formation in 2010, and were recently written about in at least one tabloid thanks to Devine being sent to Pentonville Prison for a drug rehab programme. (The hook for the story was Devine\u2019s father Alan McGee\u2019s public amusement at his son\u2019s mishap; the vocalist has not only refuted accusations of industry leg-ups, but suggested the former Creation boss was less than a model dad.) It\u2019s hard to figure who\u2019s going to buy this album \u2013 card-carrying hardcore kids will likely deem it inauthentic; gentler indie sorts will merely hear a sloppy racket \u2013 but Flats probably relish getting on as many nerves as possible.<\/p>\n As it happens, they sound like they know their onions on Better Living\u2019s 12 songs. Self-produced, presumably to ensure that the blown-out guitar and biscuit tin drums remain unpolished, it is sometimes slow and Eyehategod<\/a>-ish (the opening Foxtrot and closing Mambo \u2013 over half the titles refer to dance styles, for reasons unexplained) and more often fast (a visceral midsection featuring the prosaically titled Fast, Slam and a cover of Crucifixion by proto-black metal teens Hellhammer). Devine\u2019s oikish bawl sits somewhere between Cal from Discharge<\/a> and Crass<\/a> mouthpiece Steve Ignorant, and while it\u2019s safe to say Flats don\u2019t have a hope of making an irrevocable impact on punk like those two bands, they uphold their legacy to a greater degree than you might expect. Sonically speaking, at least.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n