AFFILIATES
Ictus create the kind of uncomplicated pop-punk racket that can make a sunny day seem all the brighter, without exactly turning the musical world on its head. Pacy and packing a selection of rousing, youthful melodies, new EP ‘Handmade and Homegrown’ is likely to find a substantial audience if it receives the right publicity... The band expanded from a trio to a quartet last year after originally forming back in 2000, and by the sounds of it they’ve used the intermediate time to refine and develop their sound, these five tracks opting for immediacy over innovation and for the most part pulling it off pretty well. Nowadays widespread success can be as much down to simple circumstance as to raw talent or potential, but Ictus do a good job of throwing themselves back into the fray, and if fortune (or more precisely the changeable whims of the music loving public and press) is on their side, who knows what doors could open for them.