The first feature for one of the bands appearing on the You Are Here – The New Sound of Scotland CD coming out shortly is an EP review for Count the Days and their debut Backs Against the Wall. This review comes on the eve of their headline performance as part of King Tuts New Years Revolution alongside Comfort Girl, Dalmatic & The Noise Club, a tasty line up if ever there was one.
The five track EP includes their 3 singles to date Above You, Springbank Road and Get Up! alongside new song Kings and Queens, and an acoustic version of Springbank Road. Despite it’s title, Backs Against the Wall opens with the band firmly on the front foot and on the attack, a menacing crackling undercurrent quickly bursts into life with a colossal bang, frenzied impenetrable riffing coming on all hard and heavy like Frogstomp era Silverchair. The impervious wall of guitars is paired with an attitude fuelled unapologetic and passionately delivered promise in the lyrics, “I’m not gonna back down” sings Div “from no-one” and you just know he means it.
Springbank Road, one of my favourite singles of 2025, follows and changes the pace and the atmosphere, the feel of the song is altogether different but still very much in the Count the Days template. The song really struck me from the first time I heard it, the raw emotion in the hooks grabbed me from the instant I first heard it, and now it feels like I’ve known this song forever. The melody, vocal delivery and lyrics have a beguiling melancholic element to them you “wishing all your life away, thinking of better days”, but at the same time the song soars with a real sense of hope for the future… “never been one to give up without a fight.”
The third song on the EP, Kings and Queens is also the song the band have contributed to the New Sound of Scotland CD and I song I first heard the band play at last years House Guest Fest before I hot footed it across the road to see Big Girl’s Blouse (who it just so happens also appear on the New Sound of Scotland). I said at the time it suggested a bright future for the band and I was not wrong, it is a breathless incendiary rocket fuelled anthem of exasperation, dare I say packed with riffs at it’s core that channel classic Iron Maiden, cue much moshing in Tuts pit tomorrow (I’ll quietly stand to the side…)
The penultimate song on the EP is the band’s release from September last year, Get Up! Another song brimming with brio, crammed with crunching riffs, Div’s vocals explosive with a searing rage spat out with a furious venom atop the raging melee of clamorous noise.
If I thought the original version of Springbank Road touched a raw emotional nerve, I wasn’t quite ready for the acoustic version. For a band who are known for bringing the noise, this acoustic version has a rawness that has the emotion really coming to the fore, even with Div’s wee laugh towards the end.
Next Up on the Ginger Quiff it’ll be a gig review for Count the Days gig in Tuts…