Premiere: FANGZ whip up a punk-rock storm with new single, Falling Out

After releasing their debut EP last year, the Sydney-based punk four-piece return with another blistering track.

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As we enter a new decade, Australia's having a bit of a homegrown punk-rock resurgence. Some of the genre's leading stars are coming back - both in the form of international heroes with imminent Australian tours, or long-time local favourites kicking back into gear as we enter the new decade - but even without these heavyweight names, Australia's punk rock scene is bustling at the hands of the newcomers, the ones who are taking the genre's sounds and pushing it forward to ensure longevity throughout the new year.

We've spoken about a fair chunk of these artists on Pilerats over the last few years, and how they're taking the genre and twisting it with new sounds to find a unique lane. Acts like YUNGBLUD are the first experience of punk music that many of today's teens will have; his pop-driven, meaning-packed lyrics something that aligns itself perfectly with 2020's changing pop scene. Likewise, there are acts like RAAVE TAPES, the Novacastorians bringing dance-punk out of the mid-00s with thrashing guitar and dizzying synth uniting amongst vocals that pace with urgency and alarm.

Sydney-based four-piece FANGZ, meanwhile, are keeping things purely punk. After their debut EP For Nothing thrust them onto the national radar, their new single Falling Out - premiering on Pilerats today ahead of its greater release tomorrow - proves that no gimmicks or experimentation upon the genre's traditional sounds are needed to exist as a pop act in 2020; good ol' punk music still has a place, and it bloody rips.

Falling Out is an excellent introduction to the band if you're yet to get acquainted, opening with distortion and a rough-around-the-edges tease that this isn't going to be a clean or overly-polished rock song, and that's true. It quickly launches into an all-out assault of gritty punk-rock at its finest and rawest, with punchy guitar melodies meeting frantic, quick-firing percussion and urgent vocals that sear with the ferocity of punk's former days - there's certainly no watering down here.

"The song is about turning a negative into a positive," the band say on the single, which arrives alongside an east-coast run of shows this February in support of the new single, with dates in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. "It follows the story of Josh [the band's Canadian-born frontman] leaving home in Nova Scotia, Canada, and illegally hitching a train to Toronto to start a better life playing in bands and following his dreams which eventually lead him to Sydney, Australia."

Dive into the track below ahead of its full release tomorrow, then catch their forthcoming tour dates underneath that. Also, keep an eye on FANGZ as they bring the roughness of rock back to Australia in the year ahead: