Start your engines, racing fans. Soaring riffs and slick instrumental unity – a contemporary surf-rock band straight out of Austin, Texas, with a trio of musicians united in their skill and love for the process.
The Nematoads not only bring through the comfort of nostalgia in their name, artwork and overall style, but their compositional quirks and soundscapes are exciting, impressive, and a joy to let fill the space.
If you can’t check the band out in the live setting, the Difference Engine EP makes for a more than worthy alternative.
Beginning with its title-track, Difference Engine pours into view with surf-rock solos, Bond-like riffs, and a structural prowess that consistently keeps you on your toes. It’s an intoxicating groove on the one hand, a skilful performative freestyle on the other, and the format repeatedly shifts the pace and presence of each instrument with intention and creative likability.
Next we slide into the high-octane bass-heavy grip of Armadillo Races, a classic riff taking us back to the soundtracks of classic films like Pulp Fiction – something cool, fun, gritty and addictive.
Featuring Ted James on guitar, George Pestana on Drums, and David Escamilla on bass, there’s a level of togetherness and tightness amidst this band’s live captures that’s second to none. It’s a faultless and stylish progression, naturally urging you to crank up the volume, and its balancing of playfulness and fast-fingered ability is mighty.
Squid Racer redirects things a little, a touch of gamer-like swagger and charm – the faster-paced level in the retro scene escapism of a simpler era. The crash of the drums, the tone, the bends and slides and the explosive contrast with softer, more melodic moments. This one feels a little alternative, but all the more indie-rock expressive.
The Difference Engine then wraps up its ode to fuel-powered life in the fast-lane, with a quirky rise and fall bassline and jittering beat, plus some real-time racing engines, for the characterful and self-uncertain, perhaps unorthodox freestyle meandering and soundbites of Non-Bonus Track. The band celebrate this conceptual moment in time, with an unpredictable jam, and a cinematic thread of live-racing, to reinforce the underlying mood and inspiration for the whole project.
Backed by Deep Eddy Records, The Nematoads are an indie force to be reckoned with; a fun and creative project, which illuminates the talent, passion and energy that resides amidst genuine, organic rock bands.
Find The Nematoads on Facebook, X & their Website.
