Pressing of 300 vinyl copies + 100 cds. Includes insert.

Digital / Bandcamp here

“WORDS are things that people, at times between the development of cuneiform and September 1997, thought of as an acceptable and efficient way of disseminating important information from one central nervous system to another. Information about car seat belts' elasticity; that last orange you ate; which episode of Wurzel Gummidge was responsible for your lack of a functioning romantic relationship. Tiny, trivial, execrable ideas fused into linguistic missiles and hurled with chaotic malice toward tiny, unprepared minds.

Nevertheless, I will resort to using words in the aim of instructing the public at large about Shrapnel. This is because I was asked (by figures in "The Industry") to do so in the hopes of servicing large debts involved in a dispute with family and, to a lesser degree, certain animal protection societies.

Predictably (and in a manner that is indicative of the innate sloth of the individuals concerned), Shrapnel is a band with people in it. None are, at the time of this writing, missing any digits or minor limbs. This assists with what I can only presume to be their raison d'etre - dishonestly, subliminally, recklessly disguising their cheap, vulgar perversity in cheap, vulgar music. (The reader will have noticed by now that the writer has taken valuable time away from his hapkido training to listen to the start of at least 3 songs on this record.)

Commonly, common journalists who are commonly published in commonly read publications by the common public employ cliched practises in plying their dastardly trade - interviewing subjects; reading widely from established authorities on the matter at hand; interrogating their subjects' histories and socioeconomic backgrounds; consuming relevant contemporaneous art and literature; and so forth. As I am in no way a journalist, I shall gleefully dispense with this over-tired approach and simply write what I hear. This is the only way to wipe clean the vile stain that this "research" has allowed cowards with keyboards to continue to keep me out of the music press.

Catch You Out starts with one of the five drummers playing extremely softly. Then, without being commanded to, he plays louder. The listener is being played for a fool here, expected to be so gullible as to believe that this was indeed an idea formed by the drummer without being explicitly told to do so. Nice try, Shrapnel, but there's no way thinking people who work and eat meals like lasagne will fall for this baloney. People who eat baloney - maybe.

To my surpise, none of the drummers engage in this kind of cheap deception in the opening of Turning the Knife, but these charlatans expose their own fraudulent motives once more. The drums they are playing sound more like an electric guitar or bass. I'd like to put this down to sheer musical incompetence, but we must always remember to employ Shrubb's Razor - "always ascribe to malice".

Treating the listener as some kind of pathetic rube whose money will not be refunded, drummer Ben Schattner's bold-faced lie of a song I Won't Take Long should be grounds enough for a class-action on behalf of all humans exposed to this travesty. It took way over 3 seconds for any drums to be heard. My most recent experience of music taking me for a sucker was Jump by Kriss Kross. (The author's claimed protracted lawsuit against this song's author is likely fictitious - no record of Shrubb v. Kross exists in any legal journal worldwide).

With their pants so dazzlingly ablaze, I found myself unable to continue to sample this recording of what I had presumed to be an extensive percussion symphony. Nothing felt better than determining exactly what manner of illness and derangement possessed these inveterate liars. My years of training in certain unnamed secret Government agencies has allowed me to diagnose a person's particular malady solely by reference to their given name, and by use of a secret faculty provided to me through the practice of breaking thermometers and eating the silvery ichor within.

It is clear that Sam Wilkinson is the 72-year-old leader of a "frozen yoga" cult/commune located somewhere in the Kamchatka Peninsula; Matthew Neville is the daughter of inner-tube tycoon and Trappist socialite Dame Shelagh-Shelagh Neville; Nick Johnson has the world's most expensive collection of cancelled credit cards; Ben Schattner is the only person in history who has acted as both witness and celebrant at the simultaneous weddings of five dachshunds; Toby Baldwin is such an obviously ludicrous pseudonym that it's likely he has never existed. (Having only four drummers would explain the low-density of drums on this recording.)

When published and fully paid for this excellent article I am now writing, it will be my life's unceasing work to both expose sham percussion bands like Shrapnel, and develop methods by which record labels and streaming services will be legally liable for any future misleading information I might obtain about their bands. Furthermore, I will humbly accept any and all financial contributions to continue my destined mission of keeping liner notes to records unassailably truthful and informative by introducing criminal penalties for "journalists" who do not comply.”

- Randall Shrubb, Music Journalist