Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The explosion may be expected, you may feel the initial hum, the air around you may fill with the clamour of noise and warning sounds, and the sea of troubles outside the chamber in which you have immersed yourself in may echo and reverberate, and as each Torpedo hits its intended target, so the song begins in earnest, the metal of indifference buckles, the shell of disinterest collapses, and the captain and the crew, the heart, the soul, the feelings who muster the mind and sail the body of the listener all find that the weapon they thought had destroyed the vessel, in actual fact brought them together.
It is in the torpedo’s presence that the listener’s mind is focused, the missile of musical information that is aimed straight for the heart and soul is welcomed, and as Feeder progress in what can only be described as one of their heaviest and symbolically driven recordings during their long career, so Grant Nicholas and Taka Hirose, along with Karl Brazil and Geoff Holroyde on split drumming duties, allow the waves to ridden, the slip stream to be created, and the magic of one of the greats of the 21st Century to be felt as it hits the target with precision.
Torpedo might be seen as a continuation, the constant stream of hit album after hit album, but in the wake of the first listen the listener is assured that there is something deeper going on, a sense of being taken down several fathoms of music to a place where a bottomless mystery starts to be revealed; and whilst albums such as Echo Park, Renegades, and Comfort In Sound might be considered more commercially comfortable, Torpedo, like Generation Freakshow, has an engine to it that sends a signal out that thrills the sense of the profound, the untold story under the hum, the layering of personal release and relief of secrets being explored.
Through tracks such When It All Breaks Down, Magpie, Wall Of Silence, Born To Love You and Hide And Seek, Feeder have once more looked above the crested waves with a wide perspective of observation and seen that the world is more than just dry land ahead, it is vast and immense ocean in which to plunge and dive beneath, for that Torpedo is not one fired in wanton abandoned anger but in the knowledge of what it will reveal.
An album of expansive pleasure; Feeder are once again at the top of their emotional and responsive game.
Ian D. Hall