Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
What was once a dream of shining spires, of mutual collaboration between countries, and a prospect of peace, learning, and undaunted exploration forged in the unfettered potential, has become a future that is uncertain, that is stranded somewhere between bleak and inaccessible, of opportunity dashed, and expectations lowered, slashed to the barest bone of life.
If the last few years alone have taught us anything, it is that humanity can dream of a future, but perhaps dare not allow the vision to be taken for granted, for there will always be one person who will do all they can to snatch it away from all others, who will be one that refuses to accept that humanity can push forward in confidence without losing their apparent souls.
The Plague night not be the one word you would associate with having the courage to insist the unaversive depends on faith, not in gods, demi-gods, and invisible entities caught in the maelstrom of every religious belief, but in the sanctity of the human heart, faith that humanity will overcome, that we as a species can make it right, make it better, and so it is in the band who bares that moniker, The Plague, the dreamchild of producer David Adam Monroe, and their latest towering release Hope For The F.U.T.U.R.E. (2.0) that salvation is offered, where it awaits.
Electronic hard core metal, not a sentence that normally carries its hope in the seismic scheme of genre defining music, and yet The Plague hammer home the positives like a stake through the corrupted heart of the unfeeling undead; in part as tempestuous as the surrounds in which it finds itself, as ready to rage as a priest forced to recognise that the congregation have taken to taking from the collection box and depositing it into the arms of those willing to bring the apocalypse …for the symbolic nature of the craft of the recording is one of deftness, of fuelling the fire to save and redefine what it means to achieve victory and triumph in an age dedicated to the pursuit of destruction.
Rock, metal, the genius of progressively detailing all that comes between, it is the passion of each track that harbours the relish of the sense of purity, one delivered by meaning and grace, and not for the want of riches and influence. In tracks such as Not The Only One, Danger, Will You Ever Know Me, Antidote and Living Failure, The Plague more than scratch at the itch underneath the skin, they tear it apart, they dig deeper and deeper until the truth pours out objectively and with style.
An album that regrets nothing, and tastes every morsal with terrific response, Hope For The F.U.T.U.R.E. (2.0) is an attainment in quality production and insight of a very human condition, and one that which through different vantages and character of taste can gladden the heart and get the pulse ready to search for an answer.
Ian D. Hall