Bo Gritz

Forming in 2015 after Finn Holland (guitar/vocals) and Benjamin Salt (bass) linked up on joinmyband.com; taking their name from the pages of Jon Ronson’s Gonzo journalism, Bo Gritz’s early years were a bustle of activity.  There were braces of EPs and singles, prolific gigging stints across London and UK with the likes of Black Midi, HMLTD, 404 Guild and Bo Ningen. But as drummer Max Goulding got increasingly pulled away from the band by his day job as Black Midi’s touring sound engineer - and as the pandemic started to rear its disruptive head, things began to teeter to a halt.

And yet. “Covid was actually a really good thing for us, relatively speaking” explains Salt. “Quite quickly into the pandemic, we were like “maybe we should just try and get together and see what happens. Just play again, and write.” The opportunity to devote themselves to doing just that came via a Gumtree post from the Railway Tavern in Tulse Hill. The South London pub/music venue was advertising it’s renovated beer cellar to rent cheaply as a rehearsal space. So, Bo Gritz moved in.

As Holland elegantly puts it, ”The Railway was the boot that kicked the album up the arse.” The time and freedom this new space afforded them helped the trio unbind their creative shackles. That, and the introduction of a new weapon -  the Electron Digitakt drum machine and sampler - led them towards a different way of songwriting. Holland started off experimenting with Lana Del Ray vocal samples. Goulding would emerge into the Railway with more “weird glitchy shit” from his Digitakt around which the band could forge new material.

Bristling with the eeriness of those basement spaces in which it was conceived, Chroma brings a frenzied half hour of pulsating industrial rock. Fitting alongside the likes of contemporaries LICE and Gilla Band, it sounds as if Snapped Ankles’ pounding grooves had been masticated by a digital meat grinder, spat out with such jet force as to shed megabytes and pixels as it hurtles through the sonosphere.