Say what you like about Die Pretty, but for all their contrived lunacy, self-conscious sleaziness and obvious influences, they are undoubtedly FUN. Perhaps it’s because singer and guitarist Andi Slut is a genuine borderline nutter who really doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks about him. Perhaps it’s simply because too many bands are too concerned with crap like ‘musical careers’ instead of simply making a racket that their parents will abhor and wonder how and why it was spawned.

This debut album is a mess. An unholy, cacophonous mess. It breathes fag ash and grime and sounds like The Cramps, Sisters of Mercy, Marilyn Manson, The Jesus & Mary Chain and New York Dolls locked in the attic with an old steam-driven drum machine and some sharp metal objects to play with. Like fellow grime-rockers Sludgefeast, Die Pretty shouldn’t be taken seriously but equally they sound more like they mean it than almost any other band around in Oxford. Listen to Andi drawl the word slut in the chorus to ‘Slut’, like a lizard sucking up a fly, and say it ain’t music made in hell. It even manages to maintain its rancid cool despite ripping off the main riff to ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ wholesale. Everywhere you turn on ‘Ultraviolet’ there’s some evil offspring of some unholy classic staring back at you: ‘Soho Slam’ with its tribute to Lux Interior and appropriate appropriation of the Cramps’ gothic rockabilly; the thunderous ‘Queen Bitch, Sexy Bitch’ which lurches around Marilyn Manson territory and the creepy crawling electro goth of ‘Deathwish ‘69’ with its Suicide overtones.

There are moments when you doubt they’ve got the strength to last a whole album: ‘Down The Tubes’ loses the plot, as does ‘Dead Stars’, but the black, greasy puss that oozes from the very pores of ‘Lou Reed (Shootin’n’Cummin)’ jolts you right back into grim reality.

Recording budget constraints obviously mean ‘Ultraviolet’ is an uneven, sometimes muddy affair sound-wise but often it rises up so starkly it’s frightening. It’s the sound of a band in thrall to the ugly, dirty side of punk rock and loving every filthy, sticky minute of it. The musical equivalent of licking rusty railings and finding they taste of jam. Delicious, unwholesome stuff.

Dale Kattack