Usually, once an album is this far past its release date (August 26th in this instance), we here at GIITTV have a tendency to let things go, whether reluctantly or laughing manically as it slips, desperately and forlornly, down the waste disposal unit (no, I don’t have one really, I’m not that posh). The Veils, however, merit a trend bucking late review, three weeks after it was unleashed on us. This is mainly because every time I play it, I cannot help but sit up and pay attention, and not just because it is merely ‘interesting’ either – it actually feels a little like you’ve been hypnotised by an occultist magi, and fills you with a rather heavy unease on dramatically intense tracks like ‘King Of Chrome‘. That one – and a couple of others – could easily have come from the pen of Nick Cave in his earliest post Birthday Party musings.
Beginning with ‘Axolotl‘ though, that driving industrial throb is reminiscent of the latter day work of Gary Numan. Not vocally however, for frontman Finn Andrews (yes, he of David Lynch’s new ‘Twin Peaks‘ fame) possesses tones somewhere between B-52’s main man Fred Schneider and the aforementioned Cave himself. The whole thing is very uncomfortable at times. Even the slower, gentler compositions like ‘Iodine & Iron‘ have a faint air of doom about them. “Care to ease my mind“, opines Andrews tentatively, before going all Morrissey on us for what becomes perhaps the album’s most theatrical number. Moments of reprieve are sparse, for as soon as the figurative chink of light at the end of the tunnel starts to become visible, as you ascend to the front of the train, you are suddenly, without warning, forced back into the bleakest, dingiest buffet carriage imaginable. The door is slammed forcefully against your already pounding temple while two stray rats nibble your Cheesy Wotsits. Well, Midland Mainline’s not what it used to be, is it?
But forgive my bizarre meanderings; the truth is that the music on offer here is so vivid that it’s hard not to be sucked into such a dreamlike world – often a nightmarish one full of ghoulish dread and nervous trepidation – yet the adrenaline rush you get is akin to that which you would have experienced from spending the night in a particularly eerie haunted house – tremendously disturbing, but for some reason, you kind of enjoyed it.
The one apparent moment of respite comes in the form of ‘In The Nightfall‘, ostensibly a love song, but listen closer and you realise that it is a love song in the same context as ‘Every Breath You Take‘. Beautiful, but ultimately, more than a tad creepy. Much like the rest of this splendid album, in fact.
Total Depravity is out now on Nettwerk Records.
