Never mind the bollocks

If Mischa Pearlman's Noisey article on Slaves was supposed to make them seem less like loutish knuckleheads - as seems to be the case - then it's a complete failure. "As it happens", she claims, "there's more to them than beers, willy jokes and sales figures." Um, I'm struggling to find the evidence. The fact that they're vegans? The fact that their music and anger is nominally political?

That said, on a couple of occasions, Pearlman does skewer them in passing: "they look like they've been ripped from the mood board for a Shane Meadows film, but dragged backwards through Topman en route" and "their songs wouldn't sound out of place in a television advert for a Union Jack-themed Mastercard". Never mind her contrived attempts elsewhere to make them seem sensitive and thoughtful - this is far closer to the truth.

Towards the end of the piece, Pearlman claims: "It's not that they're not punk, it's that they're a different kind - a new kind - of punk band, one that primarily exists as much to entertain as indict, as much to have fun as to shake up the foundations of society". Even disregarding the ludicrous suggestion that 'Where's Your Car Debbie?' might be both "fun" and a destabilising attack on "the foundations of society", if Slaves are the future of punk, then it might as well be dead.