DAMAGED GOODS RECORDS 22nd May 2026
Massively packed singles collection stuffed with hooks and catchy riffs. It’s not a complicated formula: Leeds’ Cyanide Pills hammer out short, speedy, bouncing slices of pop-punk and repeat over 27 tracks. It’s a cascade of energy, grin-inducing rocking simplicity. Imagine The Ramones spliced with The Buzzcocks and The Barracudas, fused with a love for sixties tunes. Songs like “I Don’t Wanna Dance” have a sixties pop classicism, while its immediate successor, ‘My Mind’s on Strike’ is pure thrash punk right out of the late nineteen seventies. Guitar solos are very short indeed and all the energy goes into those racing chords. It’s not like they can’t play melodic guitar lines; that’s in evidence at multiple points, but they prefer to illustrate the songs, not gild them.
Topics are simple and classic – looking for a ‘New Love’, ‘Conspiracy Theory’, ‘My Baby’s Become a Right Wing Extremist’ and the perennial tale of ‘Johnny Thunders Lived in Leeds’ (what – no mention of Henry Rollin’s residence on Harold Mount?)
33 tracks cover the ground from 2009 to now, through singles, A & B sides in a relentless, yet never-tiring cavalcade of riffs and choruses, all recorded at the Billiard Room in Leeds, a scant half mile from the Brudenell Social Club.
Bangers recommended by the band to try include the Doll’s-ish ‘Waiting (For You To Call Me)’ and first release, ‘Break it Up’, which shines with the glam-punk essence of the best of 1979. ‘Stick ‘em Up’ is their nod to glam rock, while ‘Lock-up’ is an attempt at Ruts-ish sound. Once upon a time it was compulsory for punk bands to have a vaguely blue-beat song, whether it was The Clash or SLF with ‘Johnny Was’. Like The Police said; “Regatta de Blanc”.
This is a bundle of energetic fun, recommended for anyone who like rock and roll in it’s simplest, purest form.
Ross McGibbon