After a while on the sidelines it was something of a shock when Toronto’s Holy Fuck suddenly reappeared with a new album, which they spent two years on in Ontario. Yet such is the primal power of their music anything Holy Fuck do sounds like it was recorded ten minutes ago, with an instinctive and often joyous celebration of rhythm. There are some dark corners in ‘Congrats’, for sure, but they all serve for the greater good, which is an often exhilarating whirl of rhythm that sweeps you up like a tornado. Some of this music is fantastically dirty, as low slung riffs and clanging drum tracks do battle on tracks like ‘Xed Eyes’ and ‘House Of Glass’, whose main hook sounds like the constant revving of a motorbike engine. Even the slower tracks like ‘Shivering’ and ‘Sabbatics’ are full of tension, the latter a kind of rolling conga, with music that always seems to be simmering somewhere near boiling point. For music that goes back to first principles yet is somehow consistently adventurous, Holy Fuck hit the spot every time, and it’s great to have them back sooner than we expected.
5 out of 5
Reviewed by: Ben Hogwood
