If you like Child Abuse, then this is something you will love!
To clarify, I am referring to the band Child Abuse. For what it’s worth I also love Clown Core’s albums, so that’s the ball park we are playing in here.
So, what is a Belle Royals? Well they are a band that sound like all of the negative experiences of illegally downloading music in 2003; unnatural skips, a complete lack of audio clarity, sounding more like the music played in Matalan than that rare Nirvana demo you clicked on, and ultimately leaving you wondering whether the band were creative geniuses or what could have possibly caused the file to become so astronomically fucked and still recognisable as an mp3. I guess what I’m trying to say is that us noise heads will listen to any old shit, and this is the poster… whatever that thing on the cover is supposed to be. I’m not selling this well, am I?
Belle Royals are basically all of that but reigned into an enjoyable package. Like, there are some nice riffs, but personally the incoherent shouting and distorted distortion are swell. Something about it being shit but intentionally sounding like shit cancels out the shit. Math.
If you’ve made it this far, this is obviously for you so here’s something meaningful. Robustly Armenian kicks straight in with aggressive frustration in full force, transitioning with more ambient styles until you reach what sounds like a mental breakdown whilst on hold to the NHS.
The depth is something to marvel at, with more genres tapped into than I have skills on my CV. How To Watch Football’s strong, funky bassline tearing through the layers of noisy whirring, the lo-fi tribal percussion of Foreword By KK and Cher Jean Renoir’s genuinely pleasant arrangement are small snippets that will leap out from the pure anarchy that ultimately resembles a mixtape of my mental health issues.
This is one of those albums that made me want to write immediately, but ultimately left me with 4 paragraphs of Baileys infused ramblings about Child Abuse (again, the band) and not much to say about Robustly Armenian. It is one of those albums that are so difficult to describe whilst retaining any form of sense, it would be easier just to grab a dictionary and highlight all of the relevant words and post that instead.
Just watch the video below, you’ll kinda get the gist.
Jake Hancke – 24/03/2024
Robustly Armenian is available on 29th March 2024 with a cassette pre-order from Cruel Nature Records
You can follow Belle Royals on Facebook, Instagram and Threads
The Cauteriser 
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