At last, it arrives with their long-awaited debut album, The Appearing. If KARLOFF’s previous two short-lengths presented them as a more gutter-level Midnight, then The Appearing recasts the band in a totally new, altogether more unique light – and one that’s still brimming with that ever-special twist of olde-worlde evil. Rich and robust and ripplingly muscular, The Appearing struts like a cheetah with a heart full of napalm and flexes like nobody’s business. In fact, the lead-heavy stomp here harkens to ancient-days metalpunk like Carnivore, Best Wishes-era Cro-Mags, or even early Nasty Savage; equally, one could also point to the more modern likes of Iron Age, Shitfucker, and The Rival Mob. However, the creepiness KARLOFF hinted at earlier reaches a fever pitch across the tastefully-applied chorus FX, a subtle nod to post-punk that ably broadens the band’s reach without sacrificing their vision. More than all that, it’s the songwriting of The Appearing which renders it an intensely re-playable record: exciting, invigorating, and skillfully finding that balance between the seemingly epic and the swiftly concise.

Regular edition on black vinyl, with insert, poster, sticker, postcard and download code.