The transcendent energy inherent in the most affecting punk-indebted guitar music comes from the exploitation of the paradox between catharsis and control. Simply thrashing guitars and cymbals to pieces is not enough: raw energy that is captured, controlled, and sealed within binary code or wax can, strangely, offer listener and musician far greater release.

It's clear from the opening seconds of 'Mirror' that London emo-core band Unhealth well understands this. The band came together in 2019 precisely to conjure a means of escaping their shared reality of disillusionment, depression, and loss. The result is a collection of five blistering tracks that provide an often uneasy, but undeniably impassioned, listen, captured in macro-detail at member Isaac Ashby's rural studio overlooking Romney Marsh. As Ashby says, “this EP is responsible for grounding the four of us during a time of desolation in which we were all feeling a little lost. It really helped me understand how important friendship is and the energy and lust for life it can provide."

The strength of friendship is well understood in the D.I.Y scene in which the band members cut their teeth. Doing it yourself actually meant doing it together, with Isaac (vocals), Matt Cummins (bass), Jack Waghorn (guitar) and Sonny Patten (drums) all booking tours, making cassettes and playing house shows as young teenagers. This shared experience meant that the band had acres of common ground to draw on when they formed Unhealth - a particularly fertile ground, judging by the tracks.

Like the blackthorn trees that grow near the studio, the guitars on 'Mirror' are tangled and constricted, complemented by the woodiness of the drums and the bass guitar's coiled metal twang. In opposition to this materiality, the lyrics explore the empty reflective space of a mirror which locks and returns our gaze, both uncomfortable and revelatory.

On swinging, slow-burner 'Enigma', the band recognise someone who represents a "great enigma" - and as if to go some way towards answering this unsolved question, repeats it obsessively, searching for a semblance of control.

A softer note is struck on the miniature 'Safe (Again)', which pairs barely-there guitar with a delicate, harmonised choral melody taking comfort from internal space - "stuck inside, with no regrets". Appropriately, the track is built from layered voice memos sent between the band members - forming a collective digital space which avoids the exterior spaces that feel so dangerous to us right now.

'Cross2Bear' pours from the speakers with a questioning, Fugazi-esque riff, matched by the uncertainty of the lyrics: "Is it not okay to feel this? I'm having terrible thoughts but I keep telling you I'm fine". Answers don't come, but there is certainty in the recognition that "this band is making me happy and I want to carry on". The sincerity of this shared mission statement is matched by swirling guitar chords high on the fretboard and energetic - yet tightly controlled - drums. In the latter part of the song, an extended bridge spills over with words, almost pop-like in their delivery: a lot can be said in the time-honoured two and a half minute song-structure.

Closer 'Leatherhands' recalls Enigma with its opening blues riff, which breaks into a delicate arpeggio and back again, until, over cracking snare drums, Unhealth ask one last question: "Can I bring you up to my world?" By this point, we're well in this world: far from utopia, but an escape nonetheless, sealed from the uncertainty outside by a wall carefully built with feedback and cymbal splashes.

words by joe stewart