It’s amazing, to my battered old ears at least, that a band like Final Coil, a band that wears it’s influences so clearly, proudly and confidently, ends up sounding quite as singular as they do. On their new album, The World We Inherited – thought by many far more invested than me in the band to be their best yet – you’ll regularly get big whiffs of Pink Floyd, Voivod, The Cardiacs, Killing Joke… all the good stuff basically – but they meld these whiffs so skillfully, so respectfully that in the end, as the final notes of closing track End of History decay into the ether, you’re left feeling you’ve listened to something totally enthralling – and with an odour in your nostrils that’s entirely unique.
The final part of a trilogy that documents, basically, the fall of Western Civilisation, The World We Inherited is as weighty a record as it’s subject matter demands. But don’t worry if you haven’t familiarised yourself with parts one and two – this album more than stands up on it’s own two feet as one of the most colossal pieces of progressive/post-rock you’ll hear this year. You’ll marvel at it’s serpentine twists and turns, you’ll nod sagely as fragments of the album’s lyrical content leap out of the soundscape and whack you straight between the eyes with their truth, you’ll lose your mind as the band launch headlong into riff maelstroms from which there appears to be no escape. But most of all you’ll be thankful that there are bands out there in these godforesaken times that have the sheer chutzpah to put something as monstrously good as Purify out at all.
I don’t really mean to single out ‘tracks’ here, however – though for the sake of complying to review protocols I’ll say that the afore-mentioned Purify and the staggering By Starlight stand out in particular for this reviewer – because this is truly an album that works best listened to, for want of a better word, like a symphony. It really does work best when you are prepared to give it the attention it deserves and listen to it as a writhing, twitching, pullulating whole. That’s when it makes the most sense, that’s when it reveals it’s majesty in all it’s glory.
My colleague Graham Goodge says this is one of the most important albums to emerge from the British rock scene in a long, long time… I don’t know about that, I’m not really in a position to judge, but I do know that when the band goes for broke about two minutes into Out of Sorts it’s one of the most satisfying listens I’ve had in the same timespan. As such, I can’t recommend this album highly enough.
The World We Inherited releases on January 16th.
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