And So I Watch You From Afar

This Belfast quartet's debut turns instrumental rock into a shouted argument, all riffs sharpened to a point and drums that hit like someone kicking a door open.

"Set Guitars to Kill" wastes no time establishing the method: a guitar figure locks in, the band chants wordlessly over it, and the whole thing lunges rather than builds. There are no verses to wait through and no singer to interpret, so every dynamic shift has to carry the emotional load, and it does — the stop-start jolts of "Clench Fists, Grit Teeth...Go!" feel less like showmanship than actual adrenaline. What keeps the record from collapsing into muscle is its wit; song titles like "Tip of the Hat, Punch in the Face" name exactly the mood the playing delivers. It proved a math-rock band could be joyous and rowdy instead of merely clever, and it made a lot of subsequent instrumental groups sound needlessly polite.