In late December (or maybe January – it all seems so long ago already) you all frothed like crazies at the ANBAD Best Gigs Of ’08 list. It was a little heavy on the old bands-side, what with both Public Enemy and My Bloody Valentine receiving monster, dizzy praise, but at least it was honest, right?

Here’s a small confession: I left another gig off the list so that it wasn’t skewed too far towards bands from the previous decade. The gig in question was Bis, on a short, ill-fated reunion tour. Bis, for the uninitiated, were Scotland’s premier* Teen-C power-proto-J-pop-trio. Their gig at Satan’s Hollow in Manchester was super-duper acers – the guys looked a bit older, but singer Manda Rin looked just the same as ever, and they sounded just as good as they did when they ground out homemade C90’s back in ’95.

Quickly overcoming any dumb attempts at maintaining a distant coolness at the back of the audience, I found myself at the front, pogoing along to the saccharine brilliance of Icky-Poo Air Raid and Kandy Pop. Fast forward a bit to the compiling of the end-of-year gig list, and I remembered two important things: that this gig was actually a year and a half ago, and that my memory is clearly destroyed by idiocy.

A straightforward story of stupidity, simplicity and honesty, then. You might recognise some of those qualities in Today’s New Band, Die, Chihuahua Die!, who play big, simple, stoopid-fun rock ‘n’ roll. Rightly identifying thoughtful musical complexity as namby-pamby nonsense, they’ve plumped for NOISY GOOD ROCK TIMES, and have pulled it off with panache.

Die, Chihuahua Die! have a song called Brian Maiden. We all know Puns=Top Marks at ANBAD. The song is ‘right up in your grill’, as the kids say, and doesn’t let up until you creep away, whimpering.

Happy Song grinds along, its riff clobbering you over the head, nicking your wallet, and running off to buy MORE cheap cider. Action Fuck Action starts at 100 MPH and keeps accelerating, dementedly, towards the wall marked ROCK DESTINY. Meet them there, right here!