Where are the poets, where are the visionaries?

So sang the blessed Derek W. Dick on Marillion‘s seminal Fugazi album (on the title track, as it goes), and, though I’ve never considered myself a fan of Aylesbury’s finest, I found those words flickering across the front of my brain as I wrestled with Hoofmark‘s latest full-lengther, Blood Red Lullabies.

I’d like to add ‘where are the utter nutcases’ to the list because clearly Hoofmark are all three and this album, a hotpotch of whatever felt good at the time in the studio, demonstrates that. It’s fluid mixture of madcap black metal (Sigh comes to mind), bucolic folk and other progressive strains is utterly compelling to listen to, completely impossible to resist and probably unlike anything you’re listening to at this moment in time if our musical diet is anything like mine.

As such, Blood Red Lullabies is almost impossible to review in conventional terms; Each track, more or less, contains more twists and turns, more inventive firepower, than many bands manage in a career, let alone a song. At it’s best, on the triumphant Azuis & Vermelhidão, the band harness the juggernaut nature of unrestrained metal to a bucolic superstructure with results that are at once dizzying yet remarkably satisfying. Doom riffs (producer Towkuhsh Razamod adds real heft to the track on both four and six string motherfuckers) jostle for the listener’s attention as El Vaquero Ungulado’s unusual vocals take centre stage in the consciousness, whilst drummer Andrecadente batters his kit senseless by way of accompaniment. It’s exciting, it’s exhilarating, it’s absolutely mad. But it’s also impossible not to love with every fibre of your being and, even if it’s not the sort of record you’ll put on repeat as soon as you wake in the mornings, it is one of those conversation-starting elpees you’ll whip out at parties to prove to everyone once again what crazy and eclectic musical taste you have. Or at least that’s what I’ll be doing…

Not for everyone by any means, you do however owe it to yourself to listen to Blood Red Lullabies at least once in your life. Any band that can sound like what you’d imagine Mott The Hoople might sound like if they were a progressive black metal band deserves just such a chance, surely… You can thank me for the tip later.

Blood Red Lullabies is out now.