Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 20/02/06
Label: Mute

It's dark. Blind dark. You've just foolishly walked straight into a wall outside your house. You're drunk but not so intoxicated that you don't notice the front door is open. Peering in, it seems the lights are blown and you're immediately sucked into a vortex of black doom. As you creep towards what should be your living room, the impenetrable cloak becomes so claustrophobic it's as if you're about to be strangled. Suddenly, it's absolutely freezing. Rather inconceivably, mud is caking your feet. In the distance, you spy bright noxious licks of fire, hooded figures and the sound of relentless, sinister pounding. Welcome to "Drums Not Dead" by Liars.

It's the utter madness of it all that really impresses. How, in 2006, when records are tossed out with such irrational, casual thought, does an album so spectacularly bizarre as this even happen? From the first twisted thought bubble of an idea from the New York City quartet, through the chain of record industry machinery, this is little short of a modern miracle. It may be the musical equivalent of a 45-minute death-march, as you approach a pagan inferno with your name on it, but "Drums Not Dead" is a miracle all the same.

Of course, it's not as if you couldn't have seen this coming. Liars have hardly taken a wild left-turn from a string of commercial pop bankers here. In fact, so gleefully obtuse have they been - the last album was a witch concept laughathon called "They Were Wrong, So We Drowned" - that many have stayed away entirely. Liars may, after all, wish to make a sacrifice. Well, now is a fitting time to join the party and witness the full fear of a soundtrack album with no film, only the horror movie you chose to play in your mind.

Apparently inspired by the loose ideals of "Drum" and "Mt Heart Attack", "Drums Not Dead" starts-off in a rather sinister fashion and becomes progressively more harrowing, right before your ears. In the main, it's a seamless, droning horrorshow, heavy on drums lifted not from the Dave Grohl textbook, rather the wicked, deathly conclusion of the cinematic masterstroke "The Wicker Man". Indeed, the mood is so expressive, it's possible to picture yourself masked, being led along the crumbling cliff face of "Mt Heart Attack". Through the course of "Drums Not Dead", you'll endure an unsettling, slightly terrifying experience, the likes of which is rarely committed to record.

The 'songs' are incantations, martial percussive tattoos, revving guitar scree and dark mumblings. Interupted by cries and whispers, these are intense atmospheric canvases drenched in the spirit of gloom-fuelled Krautrock - the album was recorded in Berlin - from a thunderstruck crossroads where The Velvet Underground met Godspeed! and sold their souls to a drooling devil. Individual themes are imperceptible, as lines like "take him out the back, throw him in the bin, dump his grimy clothes, wash his dirty hands…" rise from the foggy foreboding pit with intensifying terror.

Coldplay this ain't.

    by Ben Gilbert