Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
We look upon the modern world with either eager anticipation, or with the prospect of finding a black cloud hanging above our heads, we search in vain for the appearance of the dust bowl grime that beset the Peanuts character, Pig-Pen, the calling card to which our lives our reduced to nervous agitation about the state of the world and our own personal future in it.
It seems the fierceness of celebrity, of what constitutes a sporting hero, a person of regard in which we should look up to, that the world is happy enough to see through the past and embrace what some might suggest is the rise of the Modern Cults, the mainstream fascination driven out by the alternative and the trendy. It is enough to drive some to distraction, others to rage in the streets that the once lofted ideas are now lowly appointed, a fad in the eyes of old and dusty.
The long and awaited can often find itself in a locked room of unfulfilled ambition, a hologram of lost cause in a corporeal world which seeks definition at all points, and yet for some it can stand up to the adoration that was always going to come its way and cut across the blank expressions of those who cannot reconcile the fact that the Modern Cults is in actual fact today’s heroes for the times they have created.
The 11-track album is a multi-layered dream, one cannot but help admire the appreciation of the weaving of what would have been considered an exalting beatification of Germany’s Kraftwerk and the heady blend of 80s sound in which dark alleys of introspection opened up to, if not gleaming, then at least suitably lit future, one that is heady in the sense of Noir.
In tracks such as Into The Void, A Faction, Dead Channel Skies, the superb Odd Neighbourhood and She’s Like The Sun, glory stalks the musical pages, like the aforementioned Noir, there is surprise and devilment waiting to pick apart the listener’s soul and finding that the beat remains constant, the soul enthusing that it cannot be beaten, only cared for.
Modern Cults is the answer to yesterday’s heroes, those whose image may have become tarnished in the mix of rain and air, turned green, Holygram’s ability to offer a fresh dynamic resonates fully in the days of the contemporary taste and fashion. A strangely enticing beast, one that is not afraid, shows no fear and has heart that is unique.
Holygram’s Modern Cults is out now.
Ian D. Hall