Brighton trio Self Torque today manifest an alternate reality with new single ‘(All The Things I) Wannabe’. Says the band’s guitarist and vocalist Gabriel MacKenzie: “The single was written on a cold and wet day, sitting in a work van, listening to Californian garage and dreaming about being somewhere else and someone else. It is very much about identity. Tackling the contradictions that come with trying to work out who you are and the extremes one can flit between. There’s a lot of internal conflict, which is mirrored in the music. Dynamically, it shifts from hard, fast and direct to a slow, doomy chasm of choir and reverb.”
Along with the new single release, Self Torque announce their debut album ‘A Brutal Nadir’ will be released 30th January 2026 via Sugar-Free Records. The full length was recorded at Brighton Electric, produced and mixed by Mark Roberts (Black Peaks, Jamie Lenman), with additional engineering by Alex Gordon (The Cure, Tigercub).
Self Torque emerged onto the Brighton DIY punk scene out of the ashes of various bands Gabriel had been a part of. The trio of musicians assembled for the project (completed by Luke Ellis on drums and Jay Cross on bass) are battle-hardened punk scene fixtures so it’s no surprise that Self Torque are already making a name for themselves with their supremely locked-in live shows.
Gabriel sings with an almost desperate passion and a first-take keep-it-in-the-red urgency, delivering sombre, un-varnished truths, wrapped around distress-cracked melodies. The energy of the moment, the artistry of the composition, and the obnoxious courage of the message are all intertwined like a strand of DNA.
At the heart of this project, there’s a tug of war between two equally powerful opposing tendencies; on the one hand is a weary resignation, a brokenness, sketches of late-capitalist ennui and sorrow distilled and occasionally unleashed in the nihilistic frequencies of Gabriel’s banshee screams. As its opponent, is a Darwinian primal survival instinct, a will to live. This essential compulsion to keep fighting is buttressed by a conscious and active force, intellectual fortitude, pride, that real hard-to-pin-down stuff of substance and strength which in these powerful songs feels reminiscent or familial to that small, stubborn voice, surely inside every person’s cranium whispering “Keep going! Push on!” with a cloaked determination.
Sometimes Self Torque trade in the sort of overblown, melodramatic fuzz-laden pop-punk that Weezer made their stock-in-trade for decades. Pop sensibilities wrangle with a primitive approach akin to the first wave pop-punk bands like Buzzocks and Stiff Little Fingers. Also imbibed in the band’s sound is a garage punk energy reminiscent, at times, of bands like Hot Snakes, Young Livers, Rocket From The Crypt, or even The Hives at their most hyped-up and primal.
SEE SELF TORQUE LIVE:
18th October All-dayer at New River Studio, London with Life Aquatic Band
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