After opening with a steely guitar jangle, Undercover Crops quickly blast into ‘Life To The Lees’, powered by a circular bassline while dual guitars stab around vocalist Ted Ahearne’s visceral howl. As hard hitting as it is groove-heavy, it’s a striking introduction to the band that sets the tone for what’s to come. Next up is ‘Gone (Hurricane)’, with its wall of sprawling guitars and careening drive, before ‘Dormant King’ shifts the mood slightly with its unhurried lilt, Ted’s lyrics becoming more poignant as he weaves an introspective melody around the waves of sound.

While the first half of the EP finds Undercover Crops leaning into their punkier tendencies, ‘To The Dead’ plays like a warped surf-rock track, with its rolling grooves, jangling guitars and rock ’n’ roll swagger. ‘Beach Killer’ follows suit with some barrelling drums and warm chords, before ‘Sin Vigil’ rounds things out with a slow-burning groove that becomes more and more volatile as the track expands around Ted’s captivating voice.

Both unrelenting and thoughtful, it’s a powerful first release from Undercover Crops. To find out a little more about the EP, we had Ted talk us through the stories behind each of the tracks - however, written in order of each song’s conception rather than the track listing itself, Ted’s explanations also offered us an inside look into the creation of the EP itself.

Beach Killer

This song was the hardest of the EP to write. It was my first attempt at the craft. Poetry and creative writing had always been my therapy - now it needed to mean something.

I found myself obsessed with the idea that getting what you wanted wasn’t what life actually meant. Life is filled with so many false needs but still, there is a lot of fun to be had traversing through that journey. “THE INFAMOUS NO HOPER”, realising where this life had taken me, in no rush, finding my identity.

Life is “in the eye of the beholder”.

Life to the Lees

As I child I would dream of these grandiose moments, visualise what my life might be and where I might go. I wanted to live it all, try it all. What I didn’t foresee were the hardships and pain, although I loved hardship and felt hope.

I wasn’t inspired by writers until I read Tennyson. When I found Ulysses, I found a true representation of what it meant to encapsulate a life lived and filled with memories of love and despair. I wrote ‘Life to the Lees’ because Tennyson wrote Ulysses. It is my homage to this poem that I needed so badly at a time in my life.

“Suffered greatly, for timeless, great memories”.

Gone (Hurricane)

This song existed from the sound of the musicians in Undercover Crops. How a group sounds together and how they come together as a collective. When the chorus kicked in at every practice, I would feel the hurricane inside me coming up and the aftermath once the storm hit. The fun and pace of the good times and the destruction of self afterwards.

Sin Vigil / To The Dead

I’ve struggled with addiction for many years. I didn’t see the rearing demon of addiction until recently. My deity of death, a romanticised disillusionment. I was burying myself by my own hand.

These two songs, couple in quips, “I sold myself to sin – To the dead, I am sold”.

Dormant King

Influence and situation. This came towards the end of the writing for the EP. Joe and I would play this acoustically and realised how well it transitioned. Like so many of the other riffs in the EP, the guitar and lyrics felt so intertwined with the story that was playing out in my head. Of my father - him not being around to play music and me finally understanding what it felt like to do the same. The responsibility of performing honestly “His, not to be found”, “Hiding from responsibility” my ignorance, made clear in the chorus - “to sickness and death, self-inflicted. I see death in mirrors, reflecting back at me”.

Before change I needed all these songs and the life before, I love my band for creating the musical space to help tell my stories. This is a physical representation as much as an emotional realisation.