Dark Black Makeup

Debut album Dark Black Makeup is a thrilling half-hour of punk rock with a small ‘p’ but a big UNK!--hooky, heavy and furious in all the right places.

There’s a timeless quality to Dark Black Makeup that, again, probably has something to do with the band’s young age and built-in resistance to musical trends. It’s refreshing to hear a band that wears its influences on its sleeves without toeing the garage-punk party line, and it’s led to a surprisingly diverse collection of songs.

One of the strongest punk debuts of 2015.

There’s plenty of talent there, but more homework is needed before they graduate to the bigger leagues.

Barely out of their teens, the band's enthusiastic aping of their idols can be forgiven (they even go so far as to build the largely nonsensical "Le Song" around the lyric "come a little bit closer," which is the refrain from the Walk Among Us gem "Vampira"), but they'll need to dial down the hero worship on future endeavors if they ever want to establish their own legacy of brutality.

Less scrappy punk and more slick guitars, there’s an air of the Queens of the Stone Age about their debut, and it’s a sound they wear well.

Radkey's greatest strength is sounding urgent but never rushed. The greatest weakness is that they wear their influences like face tattoos. [22 Aug 2015, p.52]