Gout – Actual Bastard
Gout – Actual Bastard
Self-Released
Release Date: 17/04/26
Review by Jon Deaux
6.7/10
There are things that shouldn’t exist. Gout is top of my list. The medical condition. The Glasgow-based Doom-Sludge Metal band. At least the former can be treated with ibuprofen. If someone had bothered to offer it to me. Which they didn’t. Nor did anyone else. Nor did anyone ask if I needed it. So, yeah. I had to get up and go to Boots. Stand around for twenty minutes. Watch their self-checkout reject my card three times. The woman looking at the Vitamin C supplements? She watched it all. Never said a word. I know why. I’m just not going to say it.
GOUT. The band. Escapees from the well-mannered world of Indie Rock. Lucia & the Best Boys. A nice band. The kind of band my mate Gary plays at his dinner parties. The kind of band that locked themselves in and decided to get violent. Only it isn’t the kind of violence that gets picked up by the algorithm. It’s the kind of violence that leaves a stain. The kind of violence that makes you stay and listen. You can hear the room. You can hear the cables. You can hear their mistakes. Their mistakes don’t get edited out. Their mistakes get cherished. Like souvenirs. Like teeth.
The EP. Five people in one room in Glasgow, recorded live, with virtually no overdubs. Nothing to hide, nothing to fix up. Why fix it? Nobody’s coming to see us play. Nobody’s buying our records. Not really, anyway, not yet. This is no performance, just a live recording. Like a crime scene confession nobody wants to hear, but everybody has to watch.
Keep your hands visible.
We’ve been screaming this argument for years, in letters, in follow-ups, in increasingly frantic letters and replies. Nobody’s listening, nobody’s calling us ‘ones to watch.’ Nobody’s calling.
‘Inmate’ kicks in with a metal bar to the head, and the riff is dragged along behind it, could be you, could be me, no introduction, no greeting, just Ally Scott’s voice right in mid-song before you even realize you’re there, surrounded by walls closing in. “This skin is a prison, this skin is a prison” – and it’s not just a song, it’s a note slipped under the door. I’ve been reading notes like that, written in pencil, in my mailbox, from people like me, written in my handwriting, written in my voice – and nobody from the council ever bothers to write back.
‘Too Bleak’ – well, honestly, this has been my thesis on life for years – it’s just a warning that things can get worse, and then it’s just a demonstration, politely, please, and then it’s over, and we’re attacking the silence, suffocating it, and the only resistance we get is a pause, like waiting for bad news, or waiting for a taxi, knowing the dispatcher knows your voice and hangs up, politely, please, and I take the bus now, and that’s hell in itself, and I won’t talk about that.
‘I Am a Beacon of Health and Wellbeing’ – it’s grotesque, the basis of all modern comedy. Delusional self-improvement and screaming at a bathroom mirror that never looks right. The man talks about self-improvement as he’s falling apart around him, blood this, blood that, who knows? Don’t ask. “From the shit in my blood to the blood in my shit”—is this the best or worst lyric we’re going to get in 2026? It’s both. It’s funny, and then you’re wondering why you found it funny. I can relate to this on levels I’m not even going to bother quantifying. Like attending a kid’s party you were sure you were invited to, walking into the wet car park in costume with balloons you’d forgotten you’d bought, and someone’s going, “So sorry. Must’ve been a mix-up.” Driving home, sitting there staring, and you’re going, “The balloons. I still have the balloons.” And, yes, I am a beacon of health and wellbeing, surrounded by blood.
‘Junk Sick’ fidgets and never really lands. The beat stumbles along, completely unaware of how legs work and still manages to show up. Discomfort is my go-to, and it’s always been. Even before it was cool. Nobody pays any attention, nobody ever quotes me, but I’m there.
Chat Pile’s fingerprints are all over this, and yet there’s something else too, something undefined, something undefined and unwelcome, something undefined and unwelcome and present during recording. Tarmac does its job, face down, flat, silent, cold, functional, and it doesn’t care about you. There’s a moment that’s almost pretty. Good exit strategy for a band that never cared about you anyway. Makes three of us. Four, if you include my foot, which we really should.
You can hear the Sludge, the Doom, the Hardcore—the heavy stuff. Crowbar’s devastation, Thou’s stubbornness, Korn’s rumblings. But GOUT does nothing of the kind. They let the mess fester, bubble, like something sealed, left too long. You could open it, but why would you? There’s melody, here and there, trying to break free, but it does nothing of the kind.
At one point, I noted in my notebook: “This EP is what happens when self-improvement turns into self-surveillance with better branding.” But then I crossed it out and wrote: “my teeth feel loud.” That’s more like it.
Actual Bastard does not want you to like it. It does not want you to exist, but it sits there, humming, waiting for your reaction. You will react. It’s ugly, funny, cruel, intimate. Like hearing a secret you didn’t ask for. Like the best small shows, Actual Bastard leaves you changed—deaf, nauseous, maybe even liking it a little too well. You did, didn’t you? Of course you did.
Some of us know what it’s like to be changed by something you cannot see, to accept all of this. Actual Bastard knows. It knows better than most music, better than the woman at Boots, and offers up the best, and maybe only, answer to the only question that ever really mattered: why? Always why. Never formally posed, but here, it rumbles beneath at the wrong pitch.
I didn’t listen to this EP. I got mugged by it behind a shuttered chip shop in Glasgow at 3:47am. Not threatening, just wildly, wildly committed.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Inmate
02. Too Bleak
03. I Am a Beacon of Health and Well Being
04. Junk Sick
05. Tarmac
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Jon Deaux and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.