Cardiff's ferocious five-piece Panic Shack are back and they're not fucking whispering politely. After a two-year silence, the band crash-landed into 2025 with their blistering new single, "Gok Wan," a guitar-drenched attack on toxic beauty ideals and '00s makeover madness. Panic Shack has always been famed for their rambunctious, no filter live energy and punk-edged defiance, but "Gok Wan" hits a new high.
Premiered by BBC 6 Music's Huw Stephens, "Gok Wan" is a snarling, sarcastic anthem that battles against the horrible subliminal digs shown in teenagers' minds through TV programmes such as Trinny and Susannah, Ten Years Younger, and, yes, 'How To Look Good Naked'. Though the title cheekily nods to the latter, the real target here is that toxic culture of body "fixing" which left its mucky fingers all over a generation.
Sarah Harvey is leading the charge here with a vocal delivery that is part fury, part clarity, able to punch through Ali Chant's razor-sharp production (PJ Harvey, Perfume Genius). Rounding out the band are Meg Fretwell, Romi Lawrence, Em Smith, and Nick Doherty-Williams, and together they conjure a cacophonous undercurrent of rumbling bass, jagged guitars, and thunderous drums that sounds like an orchestrated explosion.
And the one for the brooding "Dentist," directed by Ren Faulkner with choreography by Lauren Fretwell, visually cuts into the very pressure points above: beauty standards, the societal gaze, the exhausting demand to be "better" by someone else's measure. It's sharp, loud, and violently relevant, further evidence that their long-awaited debut album is going to be the cultural slap in the face we all deserve.
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