Gout has a sound that leans heavily into intensity and disorder, often built around themes of personal dysfunction, mental strain, and a broader sense of social unease. Actual Bastard is their new EP.

GOUT

Gout has a sound that leans heavily into intensity and disorder, often built around themes of personal dysfunction, mental strain, and a broader sense of social unease. All tracks on Actual Bastard were recorded live in a small room in Glasgow, with minimal overdubs. That decision preserves the volatility of the performances, leaving in the mistakes, the noise, and the natural momentum rather than smoothing anything out. It gives the EP a real sense of physical presence, closer to how the band would come across on stage 

Opening track Inmate sets the tone straight away, Exactly describing the title through the sound. It kicks off with a blunt “bleah!” before dropping into a cadenced guitar riff that grates like nails on a blackboard, locking in with Ally Scott’s voice. There’s also a faint trace of early 2000s nu metal in the way the groove settles in, just enough to give it an extra layer of familiarity beneath the noise. The more it unfolds, the more it pulls you into a claustrophobic space. It is a little like being trapped inside a desperate call for help. The drums land hard and repetitive, like someone pounding on a door in a rundown suburban American flat, while Scott’s delivery turns increasingly neurotic and insistent, right up against your ears. Inmate sounds  intentionally suffocating.

TOO BLEAK

Too Bleak follows with a slightly different feel, its rhythm and pacing recalling, in a distant way, Skunk Anansie’s Charlie Big Potato, especially in how the groove carries itself. There’s again a hint of early nu metal in the structure with the track sinking into a muffled, oppressive sound where guitars and drums feel  boxed in and suffocated. That weight pulls everything firmly back into sludge territory, where the focus is less on movement and more on pressure.

The third track, and first single, I’m a Beacon of Health and Wellbeing, shifts things into something more chaotic and unstable. With a claustrophobic atmosphere, a constant sense of tension runs through it. The band describe it as “a case study in fragile masculinity”, and that idea comes through clearly: a figure obsessed with control, projecting superiority and stoicism, while hiding a dependence on substances to maintain a physical image that is already falling apart. Different feelings are on show, willing to appear perfect but with decay underneath and a deep fear of weakness. The central line, “I am a vision of health and wellbeing, from the shit in my blood to the blood in my shit,” is the perfect summary of this track.

JUNK SICK

With the fourth track, Junk Sick, the EP shifts again, this time leaning into a more pronounced 90s grunge feel. The sound opens slightly, with a looser, more worn-down kind of heaviness that contrasts with the suffocating pressure of the earlier tracks. There’s a clear resemblance to a slower, exhausted version of Alice In Chains’ Check My Brain, that sounds more  weighed down rather than driven forward. It keeps that underlying sense of unease, but delivers it in a more dragged out, fatigued way, typical of sludge doom . It doesn’t feel accidental either, especially considering the overlap in subject matter between the two songs, both circling around drugs addiction and detox processes 

Tarmac closes the EP in a relaxed, more poetic way, a final declaration of the entire content. The vocals are almost recited, pushed right to the front. A single guitar chord holds everything in place. It comes across as an almost apathetic conclusion to a work that has deliberately resisted any kind of polish.

Actual Bastards moves with intent between two very specific spaces: a drug-addled, disoriented world reminiscent of Trainspotting, and the feel of a dusty ’90s rehearsal room, where a cassette recorder sits in the middle and whatever happens, happens: anger, noise, and cheap alcohol all folded into the same moment.

Gout: Bandcamp

At The Barrier: Facebook / X / Instagram