April 15, 2004

Black Wire : Attack! Attack! Attack!

Fresh, fun and fucked-up...

Black Wire are three rake-thin teenage guttersnipes from Leeds whose blank-eyed no-wave synth-punk agenda is rocking the music industry to its very core. Born in 1985 on the wrong side of the tracks, Von, Si and Dan (surnames are for squares, daddio) met by chance in HMV one dismal afternoon in January last year when they each tried to shoplift the store's only copy of Suicide's
first album. Bonding instantly, they formed Black Wire and
set about fashioning a viciously powerful buzz-blitz from
a knackered keyboard, someone else's guitar and a temperamental drum machine.

Since then, Black Wire have kind of learned to play their instruments, or at least plug them in. More importantly, they look amazing onstage and off, like emaciated catwalk waifs shoehorned into tight black leather and razzled on White Lightning and prescription amphetamines; impossibly photogenic disco zombies who've already upstaged playmates Rapture, Ladytron and Pink Grease. When they recently performed at hip shindig Nag Nag Nag, aged queen Boy George was so aroused his make-up melted into a creamy sludge around his Manolos. But don't let that put you off.

'Attack! Attack! Attack!' and its even better B-side 'Very Gun' is Black Wire's killer debut, an intoxicating double-measure of spiky glam nihilism that recalls Iggy And The Stooges, Selfish Cunt, [/a], [a]Sisters Of Mercy and Elastica without sounding horrifically contrived. Fresh, fun and fucked-up, Black Wire make being in a band seem like the best idea in the world and piss all over their peers by virtue of giving the impression of being recklessly irresponsible while creating a brilliantly scabrous, quasi-seditious cacophony that annihilates dancefloors. What more do you want? Blood? That'll come, you sick bastards. Thick and fast.

Piers Martin