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While the songs on this second LP are based around precious few new ideas – many of which can be heard on their 2007 mini-album This Is Our Machine and Nothing Can Stop It, their 2009 self-titled debut album and the following The Letters EP – it's the introduction of a particularly resonant mantra, such as halfway through closer Lifeproof, that brings the barrage of blows an unexpectedly elegant quality. For the most part, though, Gangs is an album strewn with the debris of a war march, albeit one laced with smirks and triumphant songs.
When notes are bent chronically out of shape on Gang (starting never stopping) or when the dub influences and flowing Mellotron-like whispers sneak in on the first half of Homes, the album really starts to feel textural as opposed to bludgeoning. It's here that ASIWYFA reveal possible new paths they will follow. It is within Homes, this album’s centrepiece, that the full range of sonics they've employed since inception really collide into each other. The feedback-soaked fake ending sounds as if you've just spent the last 20 minutes being shelled, the ringing in your ears gradually subsiding.
But while the relentlessness of it could be off-putting, Gangs is laced with syncopation, breathing space, warped tones and – most importantly – a sense of travel, with a beginning middle and end. The waltzy intro on 7 Billion People All Alive At Once is a delightful breather which later blooms into a hearty seafaring gang vocal, while the high-pitched pinball sounds on Search:Party:Animal signal a landmark in the band's orienteering.
There's no getting away from the distortion, the overclocked thrumming strings gushing from the amplifier speakers; but why would you want to? It's what ASIWYFA do best: hyperactive flurries of notes, squealing crescendos, riffs upon riffs with some modulated into glitchy oblivion. The rhythm section anchors it all without dragging proceedings into tedium. The jaunty melodies and jagged incisors savaging them into bite-size shapes remain engaging for the full 45 minutes, proving that the loud and voiceless do not have to sound ineloquent.
--Brad Barrett
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Customer Reviews
their second album (I cannot claim to have heard their first).
There are two guitarists, Rory Friers and Tony Wright; a bass
player, Johhny Adger and a drummer, Chris Wee and together they
produce a complex (but not forbidding) and tightly arranged
form of rock music. It is noisy and energetic and rather fun.
There are eight tracks in the collection and we are given
relatively little respite from the raucous sonic barrage.
When Messrs Friers and Wright play furiously in unison one
can almost smell the sparks flying out of their fretboards!
(This does in fact happen quite a lot but avoids indulgence
by a hair's breadth by virtue of their enthusiastic delivery).
Occasionally a sort-of 70's prog ambience creeps in (imagine
the love child born of a conjunction between Wishbone Ash and
Slipknot). The hardcore rhythmic mayhem of 'Search:Party:Animal'
is a particularly ebullient example!
The waltz-time '7 Billion People All Alive At Once' is a bit
of a curve-ball in the proceedings. The band demonstrates a
capacity for tenderness in the opening couple of minutes but this
is soon swept away by another deluge of sound as if they cannot
quite help themselves! 'Homes - Ghost Parlor KA-6 to...', too,
manages to generate a bit of breathing space before the big
loping monster of 'Homes - ...Samara To Belfast' rumbles over
the hill to eat us alive. Final track 'Lifeproof' finishes off the
job by scraping every last bit of meat and sinew from our bones!
Listening to the album is a bit like having your head slammed
repeatedly in a refrigerator door but in a nice way! Not music
for the masses but more than worthy of our attention and applause.
Play It Loud!
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