One of our greatest home grown talents Those Damn Crows have gone from strength to strength, continuously surpassing whatever album or tour they did last and God Shaped Hole is no exception.
Opening with a false sense of security of some nice melodic intro melody Dancing With the Enemy doesn’t take long to punch you square in the bowels with what might be the fattest heaviest riff the British 5 piece have ever come up with. Glass Heart is what you might call “classic Crows”, which finds vocalist Shane Greenhall telling it like it is “flaws and all”, but that isn’t to say the band are resting on their laurels, in fact, Fake kicks hard and Dreaming is the hit Goo Goo Dolls never wrote.
The best thing about working with the same producer is the working relationship a band manages to achieve and on the band’s 4th album Dan Weller (yes, from SikTh) knows exactly where the strengths are and where to push a little harder. Let’s Go Psycho! Is the sound of a band comfortable playing a little more aggressively, to the point it has been the opening song on their live shows since the summer and No Surrender practically has a breakdown in the middle of it.
Shane has truly gone deep and personal on this album with The Night Train not being a misspelt Guns N Roses cover, but rather a song inspired by a dream that saw him awake in tears with the titular train being a “transport that takes you to your loved ones who are no longer with us, so you can be with them for a short time every night”, but it’s album closer Still where Shane really opens up.
Unusual for Those Damn Crows the lyrics are not quite as hopeful as fans are accustomed to as he sings “I have no feeling but the numbness it feels just right” about a period described as the darkest time of his life over 10 years ago. It’s clearly a therapeutic song for the affable frontman and the recording of one voice and one guitar with some strings over the top is a beautiful to end what is yet another brilliant Those Damn Crows album.
God Shaped Hole is out on April 11th via Earache. For more information head here
