8/10

If punk has always been about place as much as politics, Lurcher makes that fact blood-slick and undeniable. The Hartlepool four-piece drag their environment into the studio, cigarette-stained walls and all, and let it howl through the amps. Their debut EP 'With Love' is here to tell you exactly how it feels growing up in Northern England.

Opening with 'Stone Island', Lurcher wastes no time establishing their sound as something unruly but deliberate. There’s a wiry tension in the riffs, something half-digested between 70s-era sneer and modern post-industrial collapse. 'Mecca (Bingo)' follows with sardonic flair, rolling its eyes at hometown routines while still finding a strange kind of warmth in them.

But it’s 'Hartlesspool' that emerges as the EP’s cornerstone as a statement of geography and identity. The band doesn’t paint Hartlepool as some underdog paradise or tragic ruin, instead they capture the in-between of the pub-soaked afternoons, the collapsed opportunities, and the bitter pride of it all. It’s the song you’d write to your hometown after moving two towns over and realising it never really left your chest.

Produced by Mark ‘FOLL’ Folland and recorded at The Studio Hartlepool, the EP lives in this murky, unrefined texture that quickly becomes its calling card. The mix captures the band’s immediacy and tension, the kind that can only come from four people filling silence with shared frustration and odd flashes of joy. Lurcher aren’t trying to prove anything, and that’s exactly what makes this debut compelling. It feels like a protest shouted down a seaside alleyway, half-joking but never insincere.

They feel exactly like a group of mates making noise because they’ve got something to say and nowhere else to say it. In a world flooded with polish and pretence, Lurcher’s debut feels like a scar you wear proudly. Honest. Ugly. Loud. And completely vital.