Nature / Nurture [LP]

Vinyl LP pressing. Melbourne punks Clowns have never been ones to conform. The 5-piece started life in 2010 as a more-or-less straightforward hardcore punk act, but over the course of their first three albums - 2013's I'm Not Right, 2015's Bad Blood and 2017's Lucid Again - they were steadily evolving and mutating their sound in whatever direction they felt like. It was always loud, but it became both more nuanced and more off-kilter. New record Nature/Nurture sees the band continuing down that snaking path - it's 11 songs swerving right and left abruptly and unexpectedly, veering from frantic punk to slower, more nuanced and psychedelic-tinged rock. "Nature/Nurture is an amalgamation of our last three records, which we've made over the last 6 or so years," says vocalist Stevie Williams. "Our line-up has been a little bit fluid over the years, but this record is the band really coming to fruition with this line-up and with all the different sounds that we've experimented with over the years - everywhere from super-adolescent punk rock to nine-minute long psych jams."