Halloween timing comes perfectly for the Manchester quartet in this second LP, following 2022’s Congregation, of scorching, explosive, dark, seething goth-grunge, post-punk, post-rock, metal and hardcore, capturing religious-themed trauma in a personal and allegorical context, fuelled by rage and defiance. It’s an impressive, dynamic but also textured sound from singer Amy Walpole, Alex Thompson (bass), Alisha Yarwood (guitar) and Annabelle Joyce (drums). From the thunderous, fierce Dead to Me!, the light and shade of Final Girl with quiet, menacing passages, The Garden’s huge, towering sound (“In your footprints I suffer / Slice my hands, I'm my own blood brother/ But I burned out, burned alive/ Yeah, I burned out, and set alight”), the clattering and crashing Burn To Hit or Drank The Sap, to the more tuneful, and actually catchy Safe, the pile-driver seething rage of See Ya Next Tuesday, and especially the title track (“God put my weight under his thumb / Told me I'd soon become undone/ Suffocated by my worth/ Convinced that this was gonna hurt”), all the way to closer I See It, which scratches scarily into momentum, there’s little or no relief from the onslaught of crafted noise on this arresting, restless explosion of a record. Perhaps experienced cathartically in in a dark, seething, crowded venue live on stormy night. Out on Music For Nations.
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