First Glances – Cinder
If you’re gonna go ‘gaze in 2025, you gotta set yourself apart from the first-wave fetishists. Cue Manchester-based, alt-rock fourpiece Cinder who, accordingly, go full grunge-gaze on their impressive, pedal-driven debut. The band’s twin guitar set-up (Daniel McAuliffe, Callum Moores) throws up walls of noise for waves of sensory heaviness (Zach Ockmore, drums) to break against, but Cinder is a band of contrasts: shadows and light, weight and melody, shape and formlessness, pure heat yet few flames.
Every powerful flow that locks in with the primal roar of a wounded dinosaur is tempered with simmering, delicate patterning and the result is huge, Vows To Boscobel a blackhole sun spinning off intangible vapours and scorching solar flares of distortion. Lewis Dean’s deadpan vocals creak with fragility as they compete to be heard. Stoned swirls of early 90s, MTV nostalgia swoon in sepia tones, while the deceptive middle order of the EP is like taking a belt sander to the face when it drops with the subtlety of a barrage of bunker busters. Beware too the colliding currents of woozy guitar that pull you under like a whirlpool, never to resurface.
The cassette release of Vows To Boscobel, the band’s debut EP, also contains 5 demos of complementary, earlier material included both with pride and on merit. Drum machine and a hollowed-out remix add grimy, industrial-lite compressions, these fascinating “workings out” and more stepping stones on the way to the mighty Boscobel.
Catch the EP launch show live at Manchester’s Night & Day Café 9th October 2025.
~The Vows To Boscobel EP is released on cassette October 9th 2025 via Ramber Records.~