This is a record of many surprises. Sadly none of them are welcome or interesting.

'Rockstars' starts with a bass-heavy keyboard riff with a vocal refrain which (first surprise) turns out to be “Pop! I kill rockstars.” Oh, a bit of controversy ahoy. I start looking forward to where this goes next. Unfortunately (next surprise) “poorly executed white-boy rap in an Irish brogue” was not what I was thinking. Pink Punk refer to this as ‘slam-poetry’ but let’s call it what it is: embarrassingly bad. Then comes in another voice, female this time (Kate Tempest), moderately better but only by comparison. And this is all over some seriously lame music – drab trance at best. Underwhelming.

The next surprise is the second song 'Calling Time.' At first I thought it was a different band - all Damien Rice balladry with strings and piano. Is this a mis-press I’m listening to? Or is it the same band and their first song is ‘satirical’? A deliberately poor ‘comic’ take on rap as a one-off? No. For the third song 'End Times' (final surprise - but by now these ‘surprises’ are wearing thin) it is back to the lame rapping.

Pink Punk is the duo of guitarist Massimo Fiocco and vocalist Brian “Yap” Barry (ex-One Minute Silence). Whatever their experience or heritage, whether ‘Rockstars’ is a lampoon or delivered with serious intent, it's all a sadly misguided mess with no redeeming musical features.

I didn’t think I would say this about anything I would review for Altsounds.com but here goes: avoid.