DOWNTOWN BOYS

Cost Of Living 7/10

With songs in Spanish, a female singer and chaotic horn section, Downtown Boys are no typical punk band. Locked into the radical underground – their last album was called Full Communism – the band dive into pithy opener “A Wall”, a raging rejection of physical division, and get better the longer the album goes on. Like a cross between X-Ray Spex and Rage Against The Machine as reinterpreted via US hardcore, there’s plentiful anger, but also a hopefulness on tracks such as “Lips That Bite” or the sinister “Because You”, one of three songs part sung in Spanish.