The Jimmie Rodgers Snow speech that opens Chubby and the Gang’s Speed Kills is famous for its sanctimony, linking the liberating qualities of rock ‘n’ roll to juvenile delinquency: “I know the evil feeling that you feel when you sing it, I know the lost position that you get into,” he exhorts. But Snow, a legacy country singer who hobnobbed with famous musicians but walked away from a recording contract with RCA to preach the evils of rock ‘n’ roll, understood one thing about it better than most: Before a word is sung or a riff is strummed, it’s the beat that moves you.
And Charlie Manning-Walker, aka Charlie Fresh aka Chubby Charles, the decidedly not-chubby frontman of Chubby and the Gang, seems to have taken Snow’s words to heart. Speed Kills, the band’s debut LP, is infused with youthful energy, full of songs championing the very lawless chaos that Snow warned of. At its heart is a rhythm section that, from its first rumbling strokes, constantly feels half a beat away from tripping over itself but nonetheless keep rolling right along.
Chubby and the Gang emerged from a promising wave of early-’10s British hardcore; Charles himself did time with Crown Court, Arms Race, and Violent Reaction, and the gang’s other members—Ethan Stahl, Joe McMahon, and Luke Austin—have all played in Brighton’s Gutter Knife, among other bands. The record was produced by Fucked Up’s Jonah Falco, and while it may be difficult to directly pinpoint his influence, he seems to understand their music on an intuitive level.
The album projects a firm sense of place, and it’s not just because Charles’ accent is prevalent whether he’s talking, singing, or shouting. This is an English band, with English influences singing about English places—specifically, London. And Chubby’s London is proudly debaucherous, evidenced by the record’s artwork, an R. Crumb-does-Steamboat Willie masterpiece by the artist Spoiler. Speed Kills leads a pub crawl through the seedy side of the English capital, traversing main thoroughfares (“All Along the Uxbridge Road”), avoiding Tottenham tough guys (“Bruce Grove Bullies”), and lamenting the tragic horror of government malfeasance (“Grenfell Forever”).
Much of Speed Kills sounds stuck in the late ’70s, channeling the crunchy lo-fi brattiness of the Kids and the Damned and the pummeling swiftness of early Motörhead. They sound like hardcore kids playing pub rock, with oi gang vocals that pair well with both sloshing pint glasses and mosh-pit spin kicks. But it also offers a welcome change of pace; smack in the middle of its whirlwind 26-minute runtime lies “Trouble,” a Hammond organ-driven Buddy Holly bop that effortlessly shifts between twinkling sock-hop guitar and mercilessly crashing cymbals.
In another hard left turn, Chubby and the Gang choose to end a record full of raucous rippers on a solemn note, an ode to the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. “An odd light flickers in the tower blocks/The old man singing songs in the bottom of the glass,” Charles sings on “Grenfell Forever,” acknowledging the pub as not just a place for rowdy singalongs, but also somber reflection. Rather than killing the vibe, it deepens the mood, revealing traces of both Billy Bragg and Archy Marshall in their DNA.
Punk-band lifespans, like punk albums, tend to be short, and the unruly energy on display here rarely burns for long. If the rest of the scene that Chubby and the Gang emerged from is any indication, there’s no telling how long this particular gang stays together. Until then, you can likely find them in the pub, riffing and rioting and reminding everyone that rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be revitalizing and fun.
