RAT BOY Are Back on Their Madness, and It Sounds Glorious

The Essex troublemakers Rat Boy just dropped ‘Broken’, a loud, jagged new track that kicks like a boot to the ribs and doesn’t bother apologising after. It’s the kind of riff-first punk anthem that feels built for sweat-drenched venues and cheap beer floors, co-written with Tim Armstrong (Rancid / Transplants), because of course it is. If you were waiting for Rat Boy to get nastier again, this is your signal flare.

‘Broken’ is the latest hit from their upcoming self-produced album “Crash!”, landing June 26th via Hellcat Records. And in true punk fashion, the band didn’t record it in some sterile studio with mood lighting and expensive microphones, they tracked the whole thing in Suzi Quatro’s garden. Yes, literally. Two sheds. One garden. Maximum chaos.

According to frontman Jordan Cardy, the setup was barely holding itself together: thin wooden walls, no soundproofing, no fancy fixes, no digital plastic surgery. The drums sounded “insane and live,” and the band had to share a single headphone mix, half-hearing what they were doing and basically trusting muscle memory to keep everything tight. The result is exactly what you’d expect from a band recording like they’re trespassing on private property: raw, sharp, and alive.

“Crash!” is stacked with 18 tracks, shaped by recent touring across Europe and a clear mission to bottle the violence of their live shows without sanding the edges off. Songs like ‘Make Me Stay’ and ‘No Stars’ lean into a mid-90s punk spirit, all rhythm-driven momentum and grimy guitars that feel like they’ve been dragged through an alley before being plugged in.

The DIY obsession doesn’t stop at the music either. Cardy handled the artwork himself, going for a hands-on, analogue look instead of polished digital gloss. It matches the sound: imperfect, physical, and real enough to leave fingerprints.

Rat Boy have always been a genre-mashing anomaly, punk, indie rock, hip hop instincts, all wired into the same nervous system since Cardy’s early SoundCloud days. That weird hybrid energy got them signed in 2015, earned them a BBC Sound Of 2016 nod, an NME Award for Best New Artist, and pushed their debut “Scum” to No. 15 on the UK Albums Chart.

From there, they kept shape-shifting, popping up in film and gaming worlds, even slipping into the Cyberpunk 2077 universe, while Cardy’s writing has crossed into wider pop culture territory, including a Kendrick Lamar sample moment.

But “Crash!” isn’t some dramatic reinvention. It’s Rat Boy choosing impact over aesthetics, volume over perfection, sweat over strategy. A recalibration. A reminder.

And if you want to see what that sounds like in the flesh, you’re in luck: Rat Boy are coming to Romania for the first time, playing Rock la Mures on July 11.