Skintern’s Debut Tape ‘Free Use’ Confronts Noise Rock With Unsettling Artwork

London five-piece Skintern have put out their first tape, Free Use, a seven-song release that lands as a blunt physical object. The cassette arrives after a run of live shows and gets a nod in this month’s Straight Hedge! column by Noel Gardner, who caught the band early in 2026 and now places them among a fresh crop of UK underground acts worth watching.

The sleeve does what a striking cover should. It crashes together the colour palette and typography of a poster for a kid’s birthday party with direct, hardcore pornographic imagery. That visual dissonance isn’t a gimmick. It lines up exactly with the music’s own sense of confrontation. Skintern’s sound is dense, slow, monolithic noise rock, seven tracks that push forward with a kind of menacing inertia. Vocalist Hana’s delivery sits up front, clear but dead-eyed, never tipping into release.

There’s no label attached. The band seems to operate on its own terms, circulating physical copies the way a growing number of small punk acts do, outside regular distribution. That matters. In a moment when so much punk relies on speedy digital drops, a tape like this asks for a different kind of attention. Free Use is out now. It doesn’t make a case for itself with nostalgia or irony. It just sits there, heavy and uninviting, exactly as intended.