ninehertz

Shit the cow are back! After years of annual EPs providing a ray of light, it was all silence from our favourite Swedes in 2024, an ominous nothingness and a sense of something missing when I got round to the releases of the year round up. But here they are, suddenly announcing a release once again and it being there a day later.

Surely surely they can’t still be good as they have been for so long? At some point there’ll be a dud and it’ll break my heart to have to write as much or, maybe worse, not mention their newest release on a ninehertz platform at all. As the opening Revolution in Decay kicks in, it’s clear that that day is not today.

It is beautiful in its simplicity. I can’t even name a reference, specify what makes it so good – it just is. Oxygen Kills follows, post-hardcore with a stoner rock slant, if I am to venture some descriptor – I have to write something after all. It’s way off, instead just listen to this: there’s a bluesy element, saxophone adding levels of cool which you wouldn’t think it could, some early QOTSA breeziness; just wonderful.

There are songs that have a more punk infused edge, haunted by an Iggy Pop caricature, moments that would sit well with the output of the Lalli Brothers – Fatso Jetson and the original desert stoner scene, even an 80’s post-punk memory or two flashing by in amongst it all.

I have this increasing belief there’ll be a new Shit the cow EP once a year or two for the rest of my life, the email in the inbox informing me it’s arrived and the smile on my face that comes with it as I’m sat in a retirement home. I’ll never stop loving this band. It is joyful music, made for the love of its own creation, for the pure sound of it, and for each other.