Angry Saints' potent "Swan Song" churns like a rock machine

AP Track Review

Ironically, Angry Saints' potent "Nothing New In The Human Zoo" Album (2018) starts off with Swan Song and the thought occurred to me that this may be intentional like NNITHZ is a concept album told in reverse but I don't know, I am sometimes an over thinker but whether I am actually listening to the last song instead of the first (or not), Swan Song is a jammy post punk rocker. Carole Viñe's machine like churn starts the song off all alone, then the construction of a rock puzzle begins. Lindsay Moxham staccato guitar stabs fill in chunks, then guitarist Ricardo Regulez's patterns add more intricacies and finally big bass lines by Dave Robinson.The layers of sound, a tapestry of muscular rock as Moxham spews out words with strident guitar down beats made me think of Queens of the Stone Age a bit. What a cool ending, uh beginning.

Angry Saints are an international crew from Alameda de Osuna (Madrid), Australia (New Guinea) and the UK and are based out of Madrid Spain.

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Robb Donker








THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:

Angry Saints were kick-started in 2015 and have been roaring along ever since. An international band, half of the members from the Madrid hotbed of rock, Alameda de Osuna, and the other half from Australia (New Guinea) and the northwest of England, the band plays a powerful alternative rock with many twists and turns along the way. Sometimes primitive and visceral, other times twisted – but always satisfying. Listen out for hints of Iggy Pop, The Cramps, and The Doors.

Angry Saints have a lot to shout about in their songs – love, drugs, cars, beer, fear – all against a backdrop of varied landscapes – the sea, the desert, dreams and nightmares; your apocalypse of choice.

The album opens with a krautrock-inspired drum intro, which builds into Swan Song. Full of space and nuance, then noise. Something’s wrong, we hear repeated and increasingly-desperate in the chorus – history is regurgitating itself.

Fugitive Kind, its title a nod to the Tennessee Williams story, talks about digging a hole in technology and sleeping in it. It’s not the only cinematic and literary reference on the album either. Satan’s In Your Neighbourhood channels JG Ballard’s nightmarish themes and The Zabriskie Blast namechecks the surreal explosion at end of Antonioni’s film – all boom, bust, crowded, crushed, can, must.

The band opens up on televangelists in Hyena as they implore us: Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t believe the Hope. Stuck Inside is a punky thrash about alienation. Hay Plains is more a psychobilly road movie: flat and hot, the sky and land divided, perfect for a breakup.

Ship Of Fever moves like the tide with its 6/8 time signature – a dark tale about a colony, a ship, a disease, a governor, a solution that ebbs and flows and builds via a siren song to a rousing finale.

Mother Jones, a song from down in the swamps that features lap steel, is perhaps the brightest beacon of hope on the whole album. It’s all about everyone’s favourite Wobbly, Mary Harris J.

The album ends with Water Bear, building from a picking guitar into a massive chorus and beyond. It seems to want to tell us: don’t forget to breathe. And finally, after the rollercoaster ride of Nothing New In The Human Zoo, that’s exactly what you can do – take a deep breath and hit the repeat button.