There’s an underlying weirdness to The PEK‘s debut album, Heroin, that doesn’t come out until the very end. For the most part, the Italian rockers sound like they should have called the record “Beer,” since the kind of gaunt, tortured side of addiction is all but absent from what they’re doing, but then the closer, “Follow,” devolves into a kind of barrage of screaming voices and sharp-cutting noise. It’s definitely a surprise, and I’m still not sure if it alone justifies calling the album what they did (there’s a narrative thread in the lyrics, but whenever I think of heroin in music, my mind goes immediately to Alice in Chains‘ Dirt, and I don’t know if it’s possible for a band to make an album more aurally representative of addiction than that), but the heavy rocking six tracks beforehand still have an appeal anyway, especially when you take into account the current strength of the Italian scene.

Bands like OJM, Gandhi’s Gunn, and Black Rainbows (all of whom The PEK has played with), Ufomammut, Void Generator, Oak’s Mary and plenty of others have ensured that Italy has grand representation on the larger scale of the European underground scene, and with Heroin, hopefully The PEK can start the process of joining their ranks. The trio, which formed in 2007, have Heroin opener “Fold” and fifth track “Neo” streaming on their MySpace page and Facebook profile, and the video for the mid-pace stoner groove of “Neo” can be seen below by anyone interested in checking them out. Enjoy.