Every so often Thrash Hits .com stumbles upon a band totally by accident and falls in love a bit. Emma Edmondson introduces the unwieldily monickered, And So I Watch You From Afar.

Who needs lyrics? Beethoven didn’t and he’s one the biggest selling music dudes around. And so it goes neither do And So I Watch You From Afar. Who, despite having a massive mouthful of letters in their name, abscond from any wordage on their tracks.

“It was meant to be a bit Orwellian but instead we seem to come across as stalkers,” explains animated guitarist Tony Wright AKA Tony Face Eater. “With the long song titles we just want to make sloganeering statements of intent. Some of the new songs only have one word in the title though.”

A blazing mini rock opera in each five-minute plus opus the Northern Ireland four-piece aren’t afraid to tease your brain with gliding guitar sonics before dropping in a barrage of string and skin mauling so loud and brain throttling it’d make any hardened Hitler cry salt tears. Sob.

Watch ‘Clench Fists, Grit Teeth… GO’ by And So I Watch You From Afar

Despite drawing comparisons with other instrumentalists like 65daysofstatic and other postrock specialists such as My Vitriol, Tony insists that none of the band really listens to those sort of bands.

So, let’s get this clear – three chord strumming schmindie mimsies they’re not (“We’re just a band, but we’re a fucking great band.”) In fact their orchestrabatics are so genius they make fellow vocal dodger Beethoven’s symphonies seem like that of a grade A dunce. And that’s no easy feat.

Having already whipped up a salivating tornado of frenzy in their Belfast hometown the quartet are currently putting final tweaks on the tracks for their as-yet-untitled full-length debut album, due for release this autumn and it’s going to be bloody fantastic. Go discover them now.

This Is Our Machine And Nothing Can Stop It by And So I Watch You From Afar is out now on Our Machine Records.

Photograph by Graham Smith