Pain Means Progress. PaIn MeAnS pRoGrEsS? PAIN means PROGRESS! If making weird sounds would hurt, then the guys in Trigger Thumb must hurt their asses off. Incidentally, they have made loads of progress also, as their EP-title claims. This threesome from Bradford plays with the sudden energy of System of A Down but contorts it with hooky math rockriffs. The band further strides on adventurous song structures, over the top vocal production and ridiculously effective funky riffage. All this, in my favourite EP of 2025.
Leadsingle Mean It starts off strong with hectic blastbeats, 4th-wall-breaking-lyrics and almost manic vocals on top, until the rhythmically funky guitar riff flips the song upside down. Trigger Thumb exemplifies so much mastery over suddenly switching different musical styles, that you’d believe they’d invented it. Hats off to the production, by the way, who stresses the clash between robotic autotuned vocals, funky vibes and heavy parts. The production, mixing and mastering was done in-house by the band itself, by the way. The main melody of this track will wriggle and writhe it’s way into your ears and it will be living there rent free for quite some time.
Second track, Banana – not a Donkey Kong hommage, missed opportunity gentlemen – lives in that same interspace between funky and heavy. It’s a track that immediately grabs you by the neck and won’t let go until the very end. By each second the track becomes more manic and uncontrollably spastic. My personal favorite, Slime, is sandwiched in the middle of the EP and, rightfully so, as this one requires some pretext and some chasers to properly digest. This song is so farfetched and obtusely genius that they almost had to include an instruction manual on how to listen to it. The chorus, or what serves as one rather, is built around a question-response dialogue, in which the voices become more cartoony with each repetition. The instruments then ‘support’ this fittingly with a diverse array of bleeps, squeals, bloops and uncategorized sounds that their instruments are not supposed to make. And I love every second of it. The musical highlight of 2025, for me, is when they reprise the chorus a capella and follow it up with the return of the riff. Listen at your own risk!
Should you’ve had enough of these escapades, then The Fish will bring you no relief. This song is, for me, close to what System Of A Down was doing on Hypnotize. The vibrato on display from Arron reminds me quite a bit of those in both Daron and Serj. The song further derails – as it should – in an epic choir section, where the following passage is highlighted:”Fuck your mother! Jesus says nail thy brother!.”
The closing track, Pain Means Progress, starts with a false sense of security dressed in an upbeat jazzy vibe. The quirky basswork really shines through on this song and brings loads of panache to the absurdity of it all. On top of that all, we’re being treated on some genius staccato riffing. The ensuing chaos is then promptly interrupted by a beam of delicate falsetto by Arron. That fragility, however, would soon be shattered by a: “Let me pop this inside you!“. You can imagine what comes after.
Rarely has an EP shaken me up so violenlty in under twenty minutes. And pain has never been so concisely depicted in sound. I think that if you’d ask Trigger Thumb how many styles of vocals they could showcase in a single song, they’d reply with a grinning YES. The band has made huge strides on PMP compared to their previous work and it is the best music I have laid my ears on in 2025. The production, instruments, vocal styles, they’re simply put, top-notch. This band is so under-appreciated and deserves all the praise coming their way. PMP itself can be listened to and bought solely on Bandcamp – please buy it on a friday, that way the money goes integrally to the artist -. Well, time for a new set of underwear and another smoke, this was a wild ride.
Links: