THERAPY? - LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF THE TERRIBLE THING
Blast Records

It’s somehow reassuring that Therapy? are still going strong, some twenty years after they first emerged, and haven’t mellowed with age, as this preview from their forthcoming thirteenth studio album A Brief Crack of Light shows. Opening up with the sort of effortlessly thunderous riffs that younger bands can only dream of, the track settles into a dirty, bass-driven, funky groove with Andy Cairns’ grizzled vocals adding extra bite to the proceedings.

It doesn’t have the commercial edge of the band’s famed hit singles, but it does share the nihilistic edge that made those records rather out of place in a Top of the Pops world. As guitar music is currently at its lowest ever ebb – at least according the the gleeful reports from the BBC – it’s good to see old-school bands like this still kicking it. On the basis of this, the album should be quite something.

DAVID FLINT

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