In such an interconnected age as today, I’m surprised more bands don’t realise that just making music is limiting your appeal and that the best approach is a multi-pronged media attack. Okay, many deliver their music with a video to create a pincer movement of audio and images but far too few put out their own comic book series, one where they are the characters and the music can be considered the sound track. That’s clever, very clever.

Save Me is Suburban Vermin doing what they do best, splicing rasping old-school punk with the pop-punk revivalists who followed a decade or so later, 60’s garage rock with the stripped down nu-punk of the here and now, into a best of all worlds musical scenario. It is short, sharp and to the point, pop aware and highly melodic, raw, ragged, punchy and jagged. Everything that the subversive strains of rock in all its forms has thrived on since the first rockers declared James Dean a deity and went into battle to win the heart, mind and disposable income of the newly designated teenager.

If there is a better garage rock band operating on the circuit today then I’m yet to stumble across them, they capture all the raw energy, swagger, verve and attitude of a small club band bursting out of their restrictive environment to take on the world. They are also a band who have worked out that the wheel doesn’t need re-inventing, it just needs a clean up, re-treading and some fancy rims added then taken out for a spin to leave some indelible and unsightly marks all over the road, possibly invoking an angry letter to the local newspaper from local residents. Buckle up; it is going to be one hell of a ride.

The wonderfully named Suburban Vermin continue their mission to pour all the snottiest, surliest, most belligerent and confrontational strains of music from the contemporary era into their sonic cauldron and create a new musical soup for the current disaffected and disenfranchised times.

In a whisker under three minutes Different Note manages to embrace the sneering punk, brutal tastes of the hardcore fan and misunderstood angst ridden grunger in one fell swoop. The raw and relentless drive will speak to metalheads and the dark and jagged undertones are a place even the estranged proto-goth can find solace. Call it what you will this is mutant rock at its finest.

Beat Before Breakdown follows its own advice and delivers something that sounds straight out of CBGB’s from that disease ridden golden age of the mid-seventies, put this in a Heartbreakers set (time travel required) and no-one would bat an eye lid.

If Suburban Vermin prove one thing it is that we can argue about generic labels, fashion and fine details but the spirit that runs through their songs is one that has been catching the ear of every wild eyed loner since James Dean first embodied the image over half a century ago. It isn’t really about the messenger it is about the message, the common ground, the tribal connection, the idea that you may not be as alone as you think.

The songs speak attitude, the lyrics drip bile and the whole package seems to be a vehicle for the dark underbelly of every musical outsider since the clock was first rocked around. It’s a wonderful skill to have, to be able to take every disinherited idea, every discarded and ignored, non-conformist expression music has ever turned its commercial minded back on and forge them into an all embracing, all uniting anthem, but its what Suburban Vermin do. Deal with it!