Regardless of how many front covers the likes of The Kaiser Chiefs and Cribs have brought back home, it's the darker, scabrous, DIY underbelly dragging along the pavement of the West Yorks scene that pulls the weight of real creativity, even if its' labours go unnoticed by the wider world at the best of times.
And nowhere is this rampant creativity recorded more generously than in an embarrasingly diverse catalogue of releases by the stupidly unsung Wrath Records label. Staunchly independent in the very best sense of the term, the Wrath label has beguiled us with amazing releases from the criminally-ignored likes of Being 747, Galitza, Stuffy & The Fuses and the uncompromising Farming Incident over the past six or seven years, yet somehow even these creative suns have been eclipsed by the power of the label's vanguards THE SCARAMANGA SIX'S behemoth of a back catalogue.
Yes, I grant you I seem to be embarking on the kind of epistle I'd usually reserve for a major album review, not a mere trailer single, but if The Scaramanga Six's new single 'Walking Through Houses' is any indication of how good their new album ('A Pound Of Flesh') is going to be, then I think could be on course to scaling heights even more daunting than those they conquered with their two previous classics, 'Cabin Fever' and 'The Dance Of Death'.
Let's not piss about here. 'Walking Through Houses' is the best single I've heard in yonks. Opening up reined-in and brooding and with more than a touch of Sonic Youth about it, it's a stalker anthem par excellence and it takes until almost the two minute mark before Gareth Champion's drums finally hammer in like a freight train taking out a power station before the band release the full, venemous potential of their muscular brilliance. It's just right too, for the bristling menace in the Morricone vocals up to this point ("woman in a dressing gown/ man who likes to play around/ you should be afraid of me") ensure the tension and unbridled psychosis simply has to have a conduit. Suffice it to say that 'Walking Through Houses' makes even the thrusting sexual darkness inherent in The Stones' 'Midnight Rambler' seem like an outing to feed the ducks. It is, without any question, a masterpiece.
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Don't expect your goosebumps to let up for long, either, for the macabre thrills inherent in the fabulous flipside 'I Can See A Murder' are equally beautifully realised. Pitting, sunset-riding John Barry guitars with lurching riffbound logic, drums like anvils falling from the skies and JJ Burnel-shafting basslines from Steve Morricone, it's a real tale of the unexpected ("one summer's day, he dug a grave/ and filled it with the body of his wife") spiced up with a Hitchcockian twist or three and produced with power and gravitas to spare by Cardiacs mainstay Tim Smith. It's good enough to give its' ultra-creepy partner a serious run for its' blood money and must already be earning its' spurs as a live favourite.
So let's not beat around the bush. Both sides of this remarkable record are among their very finest and urinate from a very great height indeed on most of the contemporary competition. That The Scaramanga Six remain one of the UK's greatest undiscovered bands is a travesty, but once again we've a chance to ensure this sorry state of affairs finally changes. Get this. You need it. Enough said.
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