Liverpool Sound and Vision rating 8.5/10
The urge to smite your enemies is a powerful emotion in which some say you must resist, others take the softer approach, the more forgiving road in which the best way to treat those who have done you wrong is to think of their lives and see the problem through their eyes. To cut down and smash your anger aside or to hold close those who seek to destroy you, either way is up to you, but the impulse to Cleave is a craving that is only satisfied with songs of thunder and the rage of lightning surrounding your ears. It is after all, the finest form of Therapy?
To set the world alight is understandable, as the Welsh Bard once alluded, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”, pour on anger if it helps keep the home fires burning, if it provides heat for the soul…and it is a heat that Northern Ireland’s Hard Rock persuaders Therapy? are more than willing to provide, for the cry of havoc is one that must be countered with fire, the cries of division, refuted with the battle song of unity, the contradiction in which we see ourselves as peacemakers, whilst all the time willing to brandish the shimmering in the sunlight sword, this is a truth of therapy, the willingness to head into the fight knowing that defiance is not an ugly word and that music can bring people together.
Rage, rage…all is rage it seems and it is a good thing as well as Therapy? bring their new album Cleave straight out of the fires of Hell and present it as a gift in the same fashion that Prometheus gave mortals the chance to live like Gods in warmth and comfort.
It is perhaps appropriate that the song Save Me From The Ordinary should be one of the most outstanding tracks of the band’s latest album and career, for it is this sentence that the music of Therapy? has always been solidly grafted, an unbreakable metal bond between audience and the three wise musicians, after all, this album proves that even with time knocking on the door in perpetual hunger, there is nothing ordinary about this particular group.
In songs such as Kakistocracy, Callow, the fantastic Success? Success Is Survival, the aforementioned Save Me From The Ordinary, I Stand Alone and No Sunshine, Andy Cairns, Neil Cooper and Michael McKeegan take on the rage, the divisions that plague us, and find resolution, the sprinkler that makes the fires dampen, giving us all the time to take stock and urge peace.
Cleave is an album of tremendous spirit, Therapy? it seems is the best form of healing for the fire that threatens to get out of control.
Ian D. Hall