Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

There can be no compromise, not in a world hanging by the slenderest of threads to its sanity, to its only means of shouting out to the Universe that it has nothing to fear from those bipeds that somehow hold it hostage every day; for the only assault that humanity should administer is that of perfect noise, of the metal infused musical crowbar to the ears and one that leaves the listener understanding that the Cosmos in all its infinite glory, just wants the Earth to Rock as hard as it can without falling apart.

Thy Art Is Murder’s latest release sees the love letter turned on its head and the physical embrace of the deserted Dear John response covertly substituted in its place; it is the sense of the Dear Desolation which makes the album a conflagration, a firestorm of upmost potential and one to really get the teeth into.

If penning a letter to an emotional state, to a void in which used to something beautiful once stood, then you would not whimper in the darkness, you would throw every last straining muscle available to you to shout illumination into the world, that the final moment would not go unnoticed, it would be etched, graffiti spray painted, marked with gasoline, that you were here, that you were important at the last minute and that not even the slow blinking out of existence would stop you from being remembered in somebody’s heart.

Dear Desolation: life goes on you would cry and so to do The Art Is Murder. The band, consisting of C.J. McMahon, Andy Marsh, Sean Delander, Kevin Butler and Lee Stanton, take the sense of the bleak, of the rip torn barren and give it hope in the shape of the carefree Metal bridge; for beyond the void of our own creating, sometimes you need the noise to remind you what is worth fighting for.

In track such as The Skin of the Serpent, Slaves Beyond Death, The Fire In The Sky, the brilliant Puppet Master and the album’s title track, the letter to the emotion, to the state of being is rejected as one of failure and instead glories in the memory of what once was, a world full of ideas, of purpose and personal industry; not one content to whisper in the remaining candle light, I am done.

A tremendous album by Thy Art Is Murder, a call out to the masses that the world is not over yet, there is still so much more that can be achieved.

Ian D. Hall