Jono Schneider
What an incredible guitar album from an incredible guitar band. Songs are perfect, guitars shine like the sun and howl at the moon. I feel better with this music in the world.
Tim Grady
I'm really enjoying this. Is it as good as Dances/Curses.. who cares? My ears don't. It's another great release. I'm really forward to seeing them again live on Oct 19. It's been 8 long years since I saw them last, and I can't wait!! Go see them if you can 🤟
Favorite track: TV Alone.
What a harrowing memory
The broken glass
Their boots all over me
But is there nothing in your eye?
Takes time to see the caving sides
We’re all like that
How easily we slide
Takes time to let the feelings in
We’re all like that
How awfully
We dance around this tree
And wait for fruit to free
They never fell into our mouths
Our hearts are eaten out
And the light is wearing thin
The doors are blistered
Nobody is in
No room to cure the raving ill
We’re all like that
How easily we kill
No time to let the feelings in
We’re all like that
How awfully
We dance around this tree
And wait for fruit to free
They never fall into our mouths
Our hearts are eaten out
You know I could almost care
Dignify when feelings kind
Are given up to all
Dignify To feel them all
Please don’t hide
When feelings kind
Are given up to all
You’ll feel them all
You know I could almost care You know
In Blood is the group’s 14th album and the follow-up to 2020’s critically acclaimed Dances/Curses.
It was typical of a band so well-known for stellar live performances to release their most successful album at a time when they were unable to back it up on the road. As was the case for many, lockdown changed the band’s lives in unexpected ways. Some felt a form of cabin fever at not being able to continue to make music (diverting their energies elsewhere - founding Wrong Speed Records for starters) whereas others relished the peace and quiet, perhaps questioning whether they wanted to return to the life they had before. Gigs (so long the lifeblood of the band) were booked, postponed, and cancelled. Things began to unravel and perhaps for the first time since the band formed in 2003 it was hard to see how it could continue.
A plan was hatched to attempt to re-energise and reassemble the band: they would begin work on a new album. They would approach this as though a Somerset version of The Desert Sessions – members old and new and guests would contribute as and when time and restrictions allowed.
The same writing and recording approaches were deployed as previous albums – explosions of group energy captured during intense studio sessions and then later whittled down into more manageable forms. This isn’t unique by any means but the group’s familiarity and trust in the process now produces something approaching traditional songs, albeit created spontaneously, without discussion and without committee and captured at the beautiful moment before understanding gives way to familiarity. The ‘open door’ policy of the sessions rapidly solidified into an entirely new Hey Colossus line-up, bringing with it fresh enthusiasm and enough initial material for a double album.
Lyrically, British folk and ghost mythology provided the starting position for the song themes ranging from mutated stories of grief and loss written in the 14th Century (Perle), spiritual reawakening by ancient apparitions (Avalon) to the growth of nature after devastation (Can’t Feel Around Us, Over Cedar Limb), a metaphor also for spirit and body renewal and rebirth after trauma.
The results sound free of any genre shackles and it suits Hey Colossus. They have taken the expansive anything-goes approach that made Dances/Curses so successful and fine-tuned and shaped it into an 8-song single album that never treads water or fills time. The prominent vocals steer the listener through the music, defining it as opposed to punctuating it (or being
buried by it). In Blood positions Hey Colossus somewhere new, outside of perceived contemporaries and in a more rarefied place altogether, alongside ‘classic’ bands like The Cure, Killing Joke, Sonic Youth, Dead Can Dance or even New Order (or The F-word of course – with Hey Colossus the only band anywhere near Prestwich’s finest in terms of band member turnaround and reinvention). The band changes but in doing so remains the same. Hey Colossus only sound like Hey Colossus.
In Blood feels like a calling card for the band in their 20th anniversary year. As odd and challenging as long-term fans would expect or hope for, but somehow more accessible and to the point than ever before. It is the closest the group have ever come to a pop record and their most concise, emotionally powerful statement since 2016’s masterpiece The Guillotine. Most crucially, In Blood feels positive, like a small ray of light in some very dark and very weird times. Music can never entirely negate these feelings but, like the natural world referenced in the lyrics and sleeve, it invisibly bonds people together, lifting us up if we choose to let it.
2023 shows
July 1st - Wrong Speed Weekend, Glastonbury (Sold Out)
1st - 3rd September - Supersonic Festival, Birmingham
28th September - La Source Beer Co, Brussels
29th September - Sample, Paris
30th September - The Garage, London
19th October - The Ferret, Preston
20th October - White Hotel, Manchester
21st October - Lubber Fiend, Newcastle
9th November - Doornroosje, Nijmegen
10th November - La Zone, Liege
11th November - Le Sonic, Lyon
credits
released September 1, 2023
Robert Davis – Guitar
Roo Farthing – Drums
Tim Farthing – Guitar
Chris Summerlin – Guitar
Paul Sykes – Vocals
Joe Thompson - Bass
Recorded and mixed with Ben Turner at Axe and Trap
Mastered by Peter Fletcher at Black Bay
Artwork by Faith Coloccia
Hey Colossus are an English rock band formed in 2003. The group has undergone several lineup changes, revolving around
founding members Joe Thompson and Robert Davis.
The band is characterised by its ‘heavy’ sound, DIY ethic, prolific output, and stylistic experimentation....more
Combining crooned murder ballads with raw, angsty hard rock hooks, Melbourne's The Ugly Kings are a wrecking crew well worth watching. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 15, 2021
giro days pummelling 12 minutes monster grinder is a gem a perfect soundtrack to the time honoured tradition of going completely bonkers for one day a fortnight. that refrain of sex death sex death is tied to the title for me..the little death.sex ...and life ..measured in giros.or.lives ,measured in bi weekly trips to the hole in the wall at midnight .....a triumph of a record... probably as good as just say no..but I'm a sucker for a pair of drummers.GNOD ON christopherogley