Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
It could be deemed as understandable to those who dip in and out music as if it’s a spring filled lake, the necessity to relax into the mode on offer but always finding the temptation to run off and do something else, to give into the butterfly life cycle is perhaps a curse of modern day life. It makes it all too easy to dismiss something upon first listen, initial experience or starting sentence. If it doesn’t please you in the first couple of sentences then surely it can’t be any good.
By adopting that mindset, to live as quickly as a butterfly and be entranced by the next new smell wafting on the breeze, you are effectively missing out what could be considered a novel and new experience.
There will be those that adopt the same attitude to Gloomy Hellium Bath’s new album Sistema Solera, the opposing forces of the ethos of Punk and the grandstand of Metal blended together, not in a James Bond moment of a cocktail being suave, sophisticated and smooth but still as volatile as any cocktail when set afire, when ready to explode.
It is that explosion that grabs the ears, perhaps not on the initial foray into the war zone created but certainly the resounding double echo of the second venture, it is an explosion of subtly, of reckless flourishing and one that preserves the nature of Helium as an elemental force. This is not an album filled with the hot breathe of some passer-by, this is a musical balloon ready to burst with passion as the helium and the cocktail of nitrogen and oxygen merge to burning point.
Arguably the album is full of anger, but anger in any form is, as John Lydon once said, ‘an energy’ and it is that force that drives songs such as Alcoholic Jerk, F**k It, Dead Rising Horse and Bloody Mary. In the same way that German Thrash band Tankard were as divisive musically with the fans, so too is Gloomy Helium Bath and whilst it might take a couple of plays, it is also to be advised to not allow the mind to wander, by doing so you miss the point of the argument.
A good album, a venture into someone else’s fury is always an experience after all.
Ian D. Hall