Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It takes a certain kind of logic and courage to not feel crushed by the weight of the modern age, that the reality we fight is nothing more at times than a personification of the fantasy, of the fiction, others have written, and we somehow have been foolish enough to believe.
Facts have become distorted, we live in an age of clay feet and bronze helmets and even our greatest novelists would shake their heads at the parallels we are encountering at the hands of the extremes of polarising politics weaving their own sentences, a return to Victorian morals, of Victorian punishments and keeping the ordinary person down at heel. Charles Dickens would have rightly thought that the world would have moved on from the period in which children starved, when families were caught in the social trap of poverty, when Government could dictate without due process a mixture of hate and bile against its people, this should have been Dead Fiction by now, and yet in one respect Dead Fiction’s five part epic is only the start of a love affair that is bound to blossom.
The Scottish Trio that make up Dead Fiction may have found themselves bracketed in the realm of alternative Rock, but like the generosity that pervades through the music of one of their musical heroes Idlewild, it is actually more of a classic observation wrapped up in the sweet and sour of recording existence. This is not a narrative of creative writing, nor is it lifeless or numb, it is the brightness that comes when you shine a spotlight on society and ask pertinent questions, when you are no longer crushed by the weight of the back-hander and the repeated meme of not today.
Across the five songs that inhabit the self-titled E.P., Crushed by the Weight, Polarised Parts, Dressed To Kill, No Time and Bloodline, Dead Fiction lay claim to the minds of the thinking, rational fan and the pent-up aggression which is only released by the venting of steam and ire, a confession of distaste at the habits and procedures of those charged with our welfare, of our futures.
A brutal, electrifying experience, one that brings hope and a smile to the faces of those that will look to the band to provide, if not answers, then at least a comforting sanctuary in which to resist those who seek to squeeze the life out of us one by one.
Dead Fiction release their self-titled debut E.P. via Meraki Records on 30th November.
Ian D. Hall