Labels: Adagio830 – Vitriol
Review by: Alex Hannan
HOLY’s latest 12″ is short – one-sided, lasting 7 minutes and change – but packs in a ravening energy. D-beat and fast hardcore meet in the middle to produce 5 tracks of rampaging power chords and pared-down, vicious songwriting. They sound like a band with goals and a single-minded dedication to achieving them. #1 on the to do list – LAY WASTE… The 12″ was recorded in their practice room, a method they’ve used throughout their career, and it sounds great. Tight, menacing and claustrophobic, feedback wallpapering every break in the guitar sound. Opener “Ruins” begins with the wavery, uncertain texture of hammer-on guitar before bursting into some precision fast hardcore. Riffs skitter around the fretboard, adding unexpected feints and twists to the choruses. The drumming and rhythmic interplay on “In the dirt” shows off experienced songwriting that interlocks differing ideas like puzzle pieces, a seamless patchwork of tempos and styles in a song that lasts one minute dead on.
Lyrics are austere and bleak, full of elaborately pessimistic verdicts on humanity – “We build the prison for the wild / And now there’s nowhere we belong / Nothing behind, nothing behind these bars,” runs “Prisons”, or in “Blank stares”, “The weeping middle-class herd / Ruled by the hypocrites, abused by the mediocre / We’re the expendables / We are blank stares / We’re greedy creatures / As we revel, we will decay.” Something about the unrelenting negi vibe comes across forced, like a compression of the complexity of the human world into a misanthropic soundbite. As a lyrical tactic it feels guarded and impersonal, compartmentalised from the obvious passion for DIY punk the band show elsewhere. Unless the vocalist maintains his frown 24/7. “We deserve fangs in our flesh / and maggots all over our bodies.” Who knows.
The DIY recording techniques they use are matched by the DIY touring habits bass player Tadzio speaks about in interview, “if they could do tours in the 80’s writing letters and calling overseas, why shouldn’t we be able to do the same, or even better, with modern technology? […] Show-wise, [with booking agencies] everything seems to be sterile and “professional” “” arriving at the club, loading in the gear, sometimes not even meeting the booker of the show, playing, going to sleep and so on. For me, touring is not this chain of events itself, it’s meeting people, feeling something, doing it. Money ruins everything”¦” An attitude that resonates with me, and which highlights the substance behind their visual styling, the immaculately distressed graphic design and ominous black and white imagery, which have a touch of the Youth Attack hipster about them. In between starting and finishing this review I picked up their 2013 LP, so colour me impressed.
“Captivity” ends the short EP in great style, an ominous bass/drum groove with guitar stabs leading into tightly coiled faster riffs, each piling a layer of urgency on the last. Here and elsewhere they remind me of RUINATION, that short lived band Chris Colohan sang for between THE SWARM and CURSED. Shame they didn’t make it to the UK as scheduled, because I’m sure the live show is full on.