I’ve never tried to hide the fact that I’m a geek. I’ve read comics religiously since I was knee high and have always been, and will always be, a Marvel guy. In 1978 my mind was turned inside out and upside down when, sat dumbstruck in a cinema, I witnessed a few small rag-tag, rebel squadrons take on a planet killing space station and against all odds, win. That moment changed my life and shaped my taste in film in much the same fashion as my ninth summer set my literary tastes, when I was first exposed to the works of Robert Heinlein, Harry Harrision, Michael Moorcock, HP Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Thirty five years ago I played my first game of Dungeons & Dragons and in that moment, I became a TSR fanatic and I’ve spent, or wasted depending on your point of view, thousands of hours immersed in all sorts of dice powered fantastical worlds with a close group of friends, battling monstrosities and saving countless realities.

And if that wasn’t enough to convince you of my long-standing geek citizenship, I’m also a Disney fanatic. I’ve marked out at character meet and greets, feel more comfortable and at home in the Disney Parks than anywhere else in the world and if I won the lottery tomorrow, I’d blow this popsicle stand, grab myself a little bit of Heaven and move to Disney World. I could go on all day and tell you about meeting the Doctor for the first time, how Flash Gordon really did save the Universe, rattle off a potted history of the muscle car and go into excruciating detail about the US and UK Hardcore scenes between 1985 and 1999, but I won’t. Because this isn’t about me, this is about Dead Words, a band I stumbled across thanks in no small part to being a geek and my rabid Disney fandom.

So why did I so readily and feverishly share a fraction of my geek credentials? I did so because it takes a geek to know a geek and ladies and gentlemen, Dead Words are cut from, if not exactly the same then a very similar geek cloth to yours truly. These guys are geeks, of that I have absolutely  have no doubt, and they are all kinds of awesome. Their ferociously catchy, uplifting 1039 era Green Day meets Teenage Bottlerocket via Weezer tunes are peppered with a multitude of fan-based and geek powered references and acknowledgements and  each and every song just make you want to smile and sing-a-long with them until you blow your voice out and can’t even croak the words anymore. Oh, and how I wish I’d written the jaw-dropping opening riff to I Just Want To Read or the sixties power-pop infused, Monkees influenced closing number City Streets which is one of the most infectious and instantly hummable songs you’ll hear this, or any other, year. Excelsior! Tim Cundle

Check out Dead Words here and here