If the end really is the beginning,
then deadcuts are finished, because their debut album Dark Is The
Night is where it starts. Four musicians who have travelled through
the Rock'n'Roll cities ripped back sides before in various bands, are
now going down further dark entries and between them they have
produced the best music of their careers on this album. Their past
has shaped their present. Dark Is The Night is an alluring aural
sculpture, as close to art as Rock'n'Roll gets. This is the sound of
eighties post punk being dragged kicking and screaming back to the
future, a pure and primeval sonic assault on the senses.
Fourteen fragile yet self assured
howls from the heart, a gallery of intense insights into the human
psyche. The words are spat and slurred out by a voice that could
strip paint. Vicious guitars slash, strum and scrape, over a
pounding and pumping rhythm section, which leaves the listener
battered and bruised, but wanting more. This is addictive stuff,
mean, moody and menacing, mellow and manic in equal doses. Pray For
Jail, is a claustrophobic and cacophonic crescendo of a song. The
pulsating and tuneful wall of sound that is Mary Disorder has added
barbed wire thanks to additional keyboards by former Attraction Steve
Nieve. Floods is a dark dirge of a duet between deadcuts singer Mark
Keds and Beatrice Brown, which sounds like Charles Manson having a
row with Shirley Manson. Beatrice makes another appearance, on her
own this time and sounding more Kate Bush meets Patti Smith on the
glamorously gothic and ghostly Ragged Star, a stripped to the bone
acoustic number where the guitars pick and poke at scabs and
scars....let 'it bleed!
Deadcuts are a dirty, dangerous,
discordant, distorted and disturbing beast; The bastard son of The
Psychedelic Furs and Killing Joke with added Rock'n'Roll swagger.
Dark is The Night is a spellbinding and sublime masterpiece. Ignore
at your peril. Available from: Speedowax Records
No comments:
Post a Comment