“This song [‘Class A Cherry’] It was inspired by strippers, escorts and prostitutes and by the dynamics of power that accompany this profession. It is told from the point of view of a woman who uses the male gaze as a weapon, who she has to bear regardless, and advises others to use it to her advantage “. To speak is Katie Oldham singer of the young English band Slung, whose debut album” In Ways “has just been published by the building Fat Dracula. Eleven songs of granite rock built on riff who literally explode at every round of agreement. How to listen to a crossover between Queens of the Stone Age, Hole and Ratm.
The collision that leads to the formation of the Slung takes place under the sky of an Australian campsite, back in 2009: that's where the guitarist Ali Johnson and the bassist Vlad Matveikov meet for the first time. The latter already plays with a BRIGHTON funk-rock group, the Interchnicour, and before thinking about forming another band they will have to spend about ten years and a pandemic. It is precisely during the Lockdown due to Covid that Vlad listens to a demo of the singer Katie Oldham and falls in love with it.
At this point only the drummer is missing. Ravi Martin arrives at Matveikov's ears through the activity of his musical micro-ethics, the Small Pond. The formation is so complete and the four musicians can start registering the songs that will end up on the debut album, “In Ways”.
Anyone wishing to look for affinity will find them with the sounds of the guitars of the previous Band of Vlad: the Intechaniculies released an EP in 2015, then a couple of albums between 2020 and 2022, before melt definitively and give time to the bassist to focus on his new band.
The enthusiasm is at the stars and the new songs take a decidedly radio form. Some were written with musicians who only touched Slung, such as Zac Jackson (El Mofonian), head of the “Collider” melody, which Katie transforms into a highly psychedelic journey. The enveloping ballad “Limassol” was born at the hands of Mykl Barton (Sick Joy), as well as Lucy Sheehan (Projector) is partly responsible for the night atmosphere of “Come Apart”.
Katie's broken scream is the first sound that you listen to the disc just after the battery, promptly wrapped in by groove electric “Laughter”. The same scream listens to it later in the lineup, in the anti-corridor invective of “Matador”. Katie has clear ideas about machismo in the world (not only of rock): “Men teach you to keep silent and obey from an early age. And often we are grown to be as nice as possible and available to serve men, to be their glamor trophy or their player of every whim. As a child I was exposed to a lot of this ideology, in a large part of the way I saw desired years to get out of it.
10/05/2025
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
