GLEET’s ‘Strident’ Is Industrial Post-Punk Transmitted Through Brutalist Working Class Static –

Hitting play on Strident, the latest release by GLEET, is the equivalent of blowing the dust off a long-lost early industrial post-punk relic and instantly being sucked into the EBM drive of the release, which leaves a reel of brutalist working-class imagery spinning before your eyes as a bleak whirling dervish.

If you like getting your body beat to gothically draped protest punk rhythms and snarled vocals as they cut across vintage sound clips of the public making their contribution to archival history, Strident leaves nothing to be desired. If you stripped the romanticism and Euro gloss off Poison Ivy and injected caustic Skinny Puppy debased energy, you would be left with Strident. There’s an authenticity to the rusty and raw ambience of the single, which is becoming increasingly rare to find from new names in the industry, but GLEET have been cutting their teeth for decades.

Gregor Former and Sam Neal first began twisting songs out of life in a Little Venice off-licence in the 90s, before years of marathon jam sessions, imaginary bands and the eventual birth of Scrunt led to the project taking shape. With Michael Chilokoa and Kevin Mertens also threaded into the story, GLEET have turned friendship, absurdity and anti-commercial noise into a fully realised sonic language. Now, with more than 140 unreleased songs still lurking in the vault, Strident proves there is plenty of societal rust to scrape loose.

 Strident is now available to stream on all major platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast