Liverpool Sound and Vision 9/10

There are those who will adamantly, and with great pride at their insight, insist that the world we live in is a simulation, that we should understand what is occurring and taking shape in front of our eyes because it has already been decreed, that history is just a program given shape and depth and then inserted into what we perceive as the present day…History Before It Happens in the making.

History is already subjective enough without adding to its weighty domain, and the present is often a crowded room with ideas and notions fighting, sparing for a kind of supremacy that only it understands; so to a future we must ask where we fit in in being remembered, where our souls can be kept on a path to enlightenment rather than languishing in the presence of history’s fickle nature and selective memory.

To that end Matthew Robb serves up his fourth album of original material and it is one to which history will be sure to acknowledge but which the future playing will be lauded each time the album springs to mind and scratches at the mind of the listener. The future beckons, Matthew Robb assures it in History Before It Happens.

It is our fast tracked world where statements are written and digested before the crowd, only for events to overtake it with the effect of dynamite placed on time, that is at fault, and if we are fortune we can at least attempt to play catch up with the trails of steam left behind, but in the presence of Matthew Robb, the themes and songs weaved, even in the darkest moments that a mind can portray, are ones directly for the age, this is the audible and artistic epitome of capturing a zeitgeist, the spirit of determination to enthuse all to live in the moment and not wallow in a past designed to hurt you.

You may remember yesterday, but as Mr. Robb implores, don’t trust it, all you need is one step in the future, and as tracks such as Sacred Heart, Tower Of Babel, The Wanderer And His Shadow, War Is The Father Of All Things, and the superb opener and speaker of truth of The Greatest To Man Is Man glimmer with an ease that is infectious, so history is consigned to its rightful place, a lesson to be learned, not forever punishing.

A wonderful return for Matthew Robb and his legion of fans, a place in the future always assured.

Ian D. Hall