These New South Whales – ‘Godspeed’ album review: Aussie punks branch out with verve
While the Australian alternative music scene a decade ago was firmly fixated on producing psychedelic sounds, with the emergence of acts like Tame Impala, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Pond leading the charge, it would appear that an urge to produce more boisterous guitars has taken over in the land down under in recent times.
The Skinny: The widespread adoration of raucous acts like Amyl & The Sniffers has led to a light being shone on other guitar-led Australian outfits, with the jerky art-punk of Delivery and the garage-rock inspired Belair Lip Bombs deservedly receiving more attention in 2025, but one band who have quietly been proving their worth is These New South Whales, who return with a fourth album in Godspeed.
Over the course of their previous trio of records, the band have taken a no-nonsense style in that their energy is relentless, but at the same time, they also don’t take themselves too seriously, with their scattergun approach to genre exploration and smatterings of humour across the 11 tracks.
There are new wave elements to this latest release, which is a path they’ve been gradually swaying towards since starting out with more noise-rock adjacent sound, but this shift doesn’t mean that they’re trying to reshape their identity; they’re simply just evolving and, recognising that, they don’t have to be abrasive to demonstrate their energy.
Working with producer Ben Greenberg, whose credits vary from teaming up with synthwave giants in Depeche Mode to manning the controls for experimental hardcore outfit Show Me The Body, elements of both of these can be felt in Godspeed, showing These New South Whales’ desire to branch out into different territories. Not all of these forays land, but it’s hard not to admire their bravery in trying to add more strings to their bow.
‘Intro’ serves a sub-minute mission statement for the record, swinging from polished alt-rock into Turnstile-esque hardcore over the course of its short runtime, and in an attempt to keep the interest high, the entire first half of the record takes this same high-octane approach without ever making itself overbearing in its efforts to marry together different strands of hard rock, punk and indie.
Godspeed is undeniably These New South Whales’ most hooky effort to date, and that’s by no means a bad thing. You can have left-turns into piano balladry like heard on ‘Nobody Listens’, which somehow doesn’t feel out of place, while the subsequent one-two of ‘Pig’ and ‘Birdbrain’ in the mid-point of the record is the band demonstrating that they’ve not sacrificed any of the snarl that was present on some of their earlier works.
The Verdict: The decision to make Godspeed change its approach so frequently means that it doesn’t make them as immediately identifiable as some of their contemporaries, but there’s no denying that These New South Whales are within touching distance of becoming the next Australian act to be propelled onto a worldwide stage on the strength of their songwriting abilities and the vigour with which they deliver their work.
Defining track: ‘Pig’
Release Date: November 28th, 2025 | Producer: Ben Greenberg | Label: Self-released
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