by Jake Tatlock (@onairwithjake)
Punk doesn’t need to sound perfect. There is enough perfect sounding music out there—everything cleaned up, polished, and scrubbed down until there is nothing dangerous left. Give Rat Cage the opposite. Give the world something loud, messy, pissed off, and alive.
Bry Suddaby got into punk young and eventually found the DIY scene around Sheffield. He has talked about learning through those early shows that punk could actually say something without forgetting that it was supposed to be fun. That idea fits Rat Cage perfectly. Punk can sometimes get treated like there is a damn rulebook somewhere - wrong shoes, wrong shirt, wrong bands. Found one band before another band, so apparently somebody gets to decide whether the punk credentials are valid. Who cares? Punk is finding a room where something finally clicks and realizing, “oh shit, we can make this ourselves.” Put on the show, start the band, make the record, photocopy the zine. Record something that sounds like it might fall apart before the song ends. That DIY spirit is a huge part of Rat Cage.
Suddaby is basically the engine behind the project in the studio (while they are a full band live), which makes Rat Cage even more interesting. There is something really cool about music coming largely from one person on record and turning into a completely different animal once onstage and ripping through the music together. To Suddaby’s credit, Rat Cage’s music already sounds like it belongs in a small room with people smashed together, amps too loud, and absolutely no personal space left.
Not Asking For Much starts with “Steady On Now,” immediately letting everybody know what kind of ride this is going to be, the song sounding amazing right from the start with the drums pushing everything forward and the rest of the noise crashing in around them. There is barely any waiting around, no reason for a giant cinematic introduction. No need to slowly convince anybody that the record is going to get good eventually. It is already there. That is one of the best things a punk record can do, just fucking start.
A few songs later, “Cracks They Show” starts showing another side of Rat Cage. There are hints of thrash metal buried in the guitar work, giving the song a sharper and more metallic edge. It is still punk, still fast, still Rat Cage, but there is something nastier underneath it. The riff has that feeling where punk and thrash start stepping on each other’s toes, and that is a very good place for a song like this to live. That also makes Not Asking For Much more interesting than a record that simply finds one fast sound and repeats it ten times. Rat Cage stays planted in punk without making every song feel exactly the same.
Then the album reaches the title track, “Not Asking For Much,” and it feels like the right way to close everything out. There is some really nice guitar work in there, with plenty of distortion keeping everything dirty without turning it into one giant wall of noise. It still has that Rat Cage bite, but there is something about the guitar work that makes the song feel like everything on the album is finally coming together. It takes the speed, the grit, the metal touches, the strange little details, and everything else that has shown up along the way and ties it together. By the time Not Asking For Much ends, it doesn’t feel like Rat Cage ran out of songs, it feels complete.