There’s a lot of talk in music and art of authenticity, truthfulness…the ‘real deal’. Many claim to have it, few actually do. Mancunians Aerial Salad have it in droves. This is the band that formed in 2016 with the sole intention of playing legendary punk festival Fest in Gainesville, which they did as teenagers. It didn’t matter that they could barely play, and it was an unmitigated disaster, they still had the front to do it. This is the band that embraced and cut their teeth in the DIY punk world. They were poised on the brink of greatness with their epic debut album Dirt Mall in February of 2020 and, well, you know what happened next, every band has the same story, so we’ll park that there…Instead, Aerial Salad got their collective heads down and pushed and developed their sound away from the three-chord blare of their formative years. This was always a band you were just as likely to see sporting a Stone Roses shirt as you would Snuff. Or a Cypress Hill top as you would see a Pizza Tramp. Aerial Salad describe their sound as ‘Madchester Punk’, a nod to their heroes in Happy Mondays, XTC, and Carter USM, spiced with the current furore spearheaded by burgeoning Brit-wave bands like Yard Act, Shame, and High Vis. Their second album R.O.I (and first for highly regarded Venn Records) leans on these influences, driven forward by pure rock’n’roll swagger while conjuring a late stage, capitalist hellscape through brutalist lyrical narratives. To put it mildly, Aerial Salad is the band you want to see play the breakdown of establishments afterparty, and you already know you’re gonna love it!Recorded lovingly in Vibe Recording Studio, Cheetham Hill in Manchester with Dean Glover, R.O.I. is an album that moves seamlessly from pulsing post-punk beats to unstoppable stadium rock anthems. ‘The Same 24 Hours (As Beyoncé)’ is Britpop rallying against the fake facade of influencer culture, ‘All Yer Dreamin’ is Mark E Smith at the Hacienda, ‘Chances’ is Oasis taking on Talking Heads. Aerial Salad find space to explore new genres without losing the sense that this is a band born out of the hard touring, DIY punk scene, a community that continues to be close to their heart.The northern three piece want us to know they’re as authentic as it gets. Injecting that raw chaos and violent charm from the stage straight into their recordings. Their goal is to make themselves known to everyone and anyone, from rave heads to indie kids, poets to rockers. R.O.I is fantastical while acutely bedded in modern post-Brexit, Un-united Kingdom canon. We’re all trying to find our places in this new world, let Aerial Salad be the soundtrack.
