Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
All you want as a fan of music, no matter the genre is two things…one that the music you grew up loving continues to be relevant, to play a significant part of culture and able to critique society and bind it in equal measure, and that it progresses, that it doesn’t stay routinely stuck in the same tropes and stagnates to the point where it becomes a broken cliché capable of only whispering sweet nothings of nostalgia and memories that fade in time as you come closer to drawing a final wistful breath.
To continue in the path of giants, gods, and legends is a challenging task to undertake, many collapse to preserve to the past’s elegance, some capture a moment which makes them stand out for a while, and some sneak out of the captured lightning’s bottle with an aura becoming of that which once stood immense, that the deities themselves find themselves bestowing gracious gifts upon; this seems to be fate of France’s Harsh as they unleash their album Feels to the decree of cool.
For Albert Arnold, Séverin Piozzoli, Julien Martin, and Léo Löwenthal, the mission is clear, to be the best, not only to be the best rock band that has emerged out of France for quite some time, but to carry the mantle of European heavyweights and push the genre’s agenda along, full, without mercy, without stumbling.
The objective of rock at its basest form is to frame theatricality and meld it with sensitive objection, to place within a tale of measure, perhaps of love, of darkness, the historical, the dynamic, all uncontainable, all primed to set loose the testosterone, to see the flamboyance and the complex shine, and into this Feels is more than able to withstand any distraction and unshackle the chains that bind in the pursuit of all these emotions and promises.
With a cover of the distinctive Maniac immersed into the album, the fortune of tracks such as Break Your Way, Fuel To The Fire, Don’t Mess With Me, and Losing My Mind are set and complete, they refuse sympathy, they acknowledge the past by pounding at the door of both present and future, and with comfort and raging passion they succeed, brutally and with a sense of the profound, in their mission to rock the hearts out of the listener.
A test fulfilled, to hear more of this European band will be an absolute delight.
Ian D. Hall