If gritty borderline punk is your thing, then This Time Next Year might be for you.
Hastings born and bred Kid Kapichi clearly have something to say in their debut album, and they say it with grizzly vocals, hard-hitting drumbeats, and scuzzy guitars.
This Time Next Year tells a story that goes from pure anger and cynicism to self-acceptance and realisation, meaning it's worth listening to the album without shuffling the first few times to really get grips with the narrative.
The post-punk sound is perfectly demonstrated in album opener 'First World Goblins', arguably the most hardcore of all the tracks on the albums. However, every track on the album is made with intent, and you can tell in the lyrical content that each song was carefully crafted to have a specific message which Kid Kapichi have no intention of shying away from.
Having had the privilege of being local to the towns they're describing, and This Time Next Year wholeheartedly sum up what it's like being there. However, it's a feeling that anyone that grew up in a small town in a deprived area can relate to - that familiar feeling of being angry at the small-minded and being desperate to leave, but also has a twisted love for the town which you're so heavily criticising. 'Working Man's Town' perfectly summarises this feeling, with hard-hitting lines like "She sells seashells by the seashore until they took her fucking house and now she don’t no more / Bed sit, kicked out, two up, two down / That’s how it works in a working man's town"
This Time Next Year has been in the works for a while, which many existing fans will know, with several of the songs on the album having already been released as singles. Songs like 'Glitterati' and 'Sardines' being 2 years old. However, it's a testament to their longevity that they're still painfully relevant, with Glitterati picking up on the influencer culture with sharp lyrics like "I want a million likes, Mercedes Benz/ I wanna take advantage, save for granted all of my friends."
Later in the album, 'Fomo Sapiens' takes an unexpected turn with some almost 80s synth sounds being paired with the classic heavy guitars and tongue-in-cheek lyrical content. Kid Kapichi are showing they're not a one-trick pony, they can mix up their sound and whilst still being recognisably them.
This Time Next Year is chaotic yet consistent, and even with the different styles it still feels like it's going at 100mph the entire way through. This is until we get to the final track 'Hope's a Never Ending Funeral'.
'Hope’s a Never Ending Funeral' takes Kid Kapichi's sound in yet another different direction. It has a slower, low-key approach in which a piano tune sits front and centre. 'Hope's a Never Ending Funeral' showcases not just the grittiness of the vocals, but the emotion of them too.
With the previous lyrical content being filled with anger and the tone of 'everything is unfair', 'Hope's a Never Ending Funeral' that takes a spin on this into honesty and sufferance. This is as close to a ballad the band has come so far, but they do it with their own style and it creates something that's difficult to compare to any other artist as it's so their own. It's a great album closer, in particular with the way it builds up to the second chorus, and most importantly for a closer, it leaves you wanting more.
It's difficult to believe that it is a lockdown made album as it feels so present; as if you're directly listening to the band on stage. However, this adds to the only real disappointment of the album which is that you can tell it's one that needs to be performed live, but obviously, we don't know when that will be.
This Time Next Year is gritty, raw, and a very impressive debut. Here's hoping that sometime in the upcoming year we'll see this album performed the way it's meant to be - in a room of sweaty people screaming the lyrics at the top of their lungs.