It seems fitting to be sitting here, listening to Howl’s Rat Helmet double EP on Bat Cave Productions, watching Mars (the closest to our planet than it’s been in the last fifteen years) hang in a jet, black sky as a perfect metaphor for ‘life in the dark and death in the light’ finding a home in-between.

Rat Helmet jumps out of the gate with a perfect opening song in the title track. What follows staggers through a number of different styles, but all with a pleasantly, scruffy overtone. Every note and riff familiar but strange, like youthful memories of a time spent wandering dirty, city streets, Rat Helmet, as a whole, feels like a warm, worn, leather jacket rescued from the back of the closet. It made us want to write songs about hot knifing hash while listening to underground, Australian music, drunk but very much alive.

The shades of light and dark, (mostly dark) bring me back to Mars, just outside our window, on a cold Sydney, winter night. A red jewel nestled on black velvet. It’s easy to get lost in the atmosphere of Rat Helmet and, frankly, we are a little excited about what the next Howl release will sound like.

Howl is launching Rat Helmet at the Townie on Saturday the 18th with Black Knuckles and Melbourne’s Palmerslum.