Al­though oth­er british bands of their genre en­joyed much more me­dia at­ten­tion than lon­don art-/post punks Italia 90 have in re­cent years, few oth­er bands, in my hum­ble opin­ion, em­body so much of the soul and re­bel­lious no-bull­shit DIY at­ti­tude of the scene, a bit­ter and emo­tion­al in­dict­ment of a so­ci­ety col­lec­tive­ly shrug­ging off its own guilty con­science. It's about time this Band gets no­ticed a lot more. On their third EP -just like on its pre­de­ces­sors - i hear strong echoes of old post punk greats: Cri­sis, Mem­branes, Swell Maps and ear­ly Mekons for ex­am­ple. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly Italia 90 keep ex­pand­ing on their son­ic spec­trum. Usu­al­ly when punks go slow, this tends to re­sult in a hor­ri­ble train­wreck. But sur­pris­ing­ly, the slow­est, most sub­dued mo­ments are the clear high­lights of this record. In Open Veins, the gen­tle per­for­mance col­lides with the dis­il­lu­sioned and an­gry charges de­liv­ered by its lyrics. This com­bi­na­tion re­minds me a bit of re­cent Pro­tomar­tyr, while the clos­ing track Against The Wall has a sub­tle psy­che­del­ic note in com­mon with Wire's Chairs Miss­ing al­bum.