Labels: Hawthorne Street
Review by: Alex Deller
The fruits of another semi-disastrous pre-order mean before I’m even putting this down on the turntable the deck is stacked against it.
The Pelican contribution comes in the shape of a demo version of a track from their The Fire In Our Throats… release and really should have been left to be swept from the cutting room floor. It plods snoozily from light pleasantries unto a predictable loud part that doesn’t rattle the teeth like it should, all while the drab production leaves it sounding empty and inconsequential, puttering mindlessly like any number of Mogwai-influenced Isis clones currently doing the rounds.
Playing Enemy feature a couple of guys who played in Kiss It Goodbye, a glowering skullfuck of a band whose releases should be mandatory listening for anyone with an ounce of sense. You can definitely see that lineage at work here, what with the same needling, borderline-annoying approach to their music and murderous vocals, but the Priest Cop compared to, say, Man Thing or Choke sounds a touch tired and listless. Not bad, really (and a darn sight more exciting than the Pelican effort), but far from enough to make this release seem anything more than pointless, rushed and more than a little half-hearted.