Mother Vulture – Cartoon Violence
Release Date: 15th January 2026
Label: Self released
Starting off our new year with a significant bang, and certainly firing on all cylinders is Bristol’s finest Blues Punk outfit Mother Vulture with their new and ambitious studio offering Cartoon Violence.
Nestled somewhere between octave laden alt-rock (a-la Royal Blood), and hook-fuelled eighties glam finds the quartet fine-tuning and doubling down on everything fans have grown to expect for this new full length release. Coming after an extensive headline tour and campaign partnership with Gretch guitars, this album highlights what the group does best; play hard and perform even harder. Interwoven with affinity and confidence, each track Cartoon Violence is laced with its live performance in mind, overflowing with sing-a-long choruses, and energising riffs specifically crafted to turn heads.
The record opens skipping through channels before kicking into first track ‘Mike Check’. Vocalist Georgi Valentine effortlessly launches between soaring falsettos and razor sharp fry screams, not to dissimilar to Coheed and Cambria’s Claudio Sanchez, locking in the first of many stadium rock choruses, above a bed of fuzzed out guitars and driving rhythms.
‘Sufferin – Succotash!’ is a blistering punk anthem crammed with mosh fuelling licks that would make Josh Scogin blush, while ‘Slow Down’ expectedly shifts gears without losing any ferocity.
Stakes are raised even higher in ‘The Masquerade’, a decadent seven-minute anthem not halfway through the release, scorched with theatrical harmonies and herculean guitar solos. In their most recent single ‘Phoenix’, Valentine reflects the group’s passion for everything that has come before. Crafted to fill stadiums with a thunderous chorus calling out “This is everything to me”, this aptly titled track chops between modern and classic rock moments at a blink of the eye, with melodies that’ll linger in listeners heads for days.
As one of the West Country’s best kept secrets, Mother Vulture’s notoriety throughout the underground scene comes as no surprise considering their constant hard graft and ravenous hunger. Famously their live shows are as loud as hell and twice as sweaty, a relentless onslaught of stage antics akin to mathcore luminaries The Chariot, and something that has been clearly taken into consideration for this sophomore release.
Cartoon Violence is the sound of a particular level of self-assuredness usually reserved for artist’s decades into the business. If this is how the year begins for Valentine and the gang, who knows what they will have conquered by the end.
FFO: ’68 / Coheed and Cambria / Royal Blood
Recommended Track: Sufferin – Succotash!