Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is in the action of the charade, the unheard words and explanations of what stares out from behind a complex series of gestures in which guess work is the key and the answer seen as a truth of interpretation and not a travesty or imitation.

For Toxic Moth the Charades are not a game of guess work, they don’t sit around as a finale to the evening’s entertainment, they are that truthful interpretation, they are the understanding to what is seen through different eyes and how memories shape how we see the world. Charades is the game we must play to comprehend the language of others and in Charades the listener finds a wonderland of expression and admirable content.

It is the same feeling in which the Butterfly and the Moth are seen as different despite being from the same basic background, the difference being in the perception of light and dark and it in the splendour of the dark to which Toxic Moth give hope in the shadows with the tracks delivered with feeling, a slight mischievous grin and a whole lot of interesting ideas.

Charades might be a game played in silence from the perspective of the combatant but the response from the crowd must be loud, hectic, full of frenzied and wild reaction and throughout the album there is no shortage in that effect and feedback.

In tracks such as Miscommunication, Save Us From Ourselves, Don’t The Messenger and Dials (Smoke and Mirrors), Toxic Moth’s David Barrington, Scott Hawkes, Neil Stenhouse, Keith Thompson and Huw Williams bring the rational to the forefront and the greatness of confrontational beauty out in the open. It is the muse of the dangerously enlightened which stirs the soul and makes the moth not a figure to be derided or swatted but adored as much as its daytime cousin; the moth is just a butterfly given the wrong time of day in which to fly.

Toxic Moth apply a touch of class to a genre that that sometimes forgets what it is there for, to add thought to the word, to bring shadow and the brightness of expression together; a potent mix that never lets down the listener and Toxic Moth have found a way to keep the interest going strong.

Ian D. Hall