Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The pulpit is always on hand for the false declaration raised to the dark skies from the shaking fist and the determined growl of the priest more in tune with trembling the souls of the unenlightened than it is for soothing words from those whose words are placed with care before the crowd and urging the truth to be dispensed as they sing Hymns For Terror and odes and to human joy.
The Supergroup has not had much of a look in recent years, the art of collaboration seemingly lost outside of the duo effect that has come to pass on stages and in venues, but for False Tracks, the welding together of steel in various guises from bands such as The Ropers, The Snow Fairies, Pink Skull, Royal Shoals, Last Wave, and The Vexers, is one that is co-operative and combined from years of dedication and blistering hard work.
Indeed, the album they have responded to the call of illumination, Hymn For Terror, is a cascading effect of unremitting drama and concerned pleasure that in this full length affair, a far world away from the E.P.s they have been continuously releasing, is an addiction of purpose and joint rumble in the pulpit jungle against conformity and dour single praise.
Each fierce delivery by these four apostles of the Philadelphia and D.C. scene is one of urgent belief, from the opening rally of Suspended Animation and They Disappear At Dawn, and through spectacles and marvels, through the honest imploring’s and the seismic anthems of indie punk pop observations in Dandelion, Wet Market, Damnation Trance, Fragmentary Whispers, and the overwhelming hit of Darker Room, Jayme Goukas, Mike Hammel, Greg Pavlovcak, and Jamie Wilson are to be lauded for their stance and determination to block the false idols who bring damnation to the pulpit, and who instead raise a much needed injection of pleasure to the standards of the genre the audience enjoys.
Some might call it moody, and whilst the darkness and atmospheric beat is within that frame of narrative, it is better served to describe it as sincere evolving brilliance, a capturing of time in a place that has lost its way; and those pop-punk hymns are gloriously untethered and let loose amongst the dreamers and shakers.
False Tracks release Hymn For Terror on January 26th via Strange Mono Records.
Ian D. Hall