After Poison In The System and Not The Promised Land, HEX cranked out this gem of a demo that brought together all of the elements they had been toying with on the earlier demos. THE CULT's Love hit the shelves in 1985, but Billy Duffy's licks are over these four songs, and it works great with the more melodic (and perhaps slightly over-harmonized) vocals...the guitar break that drops at the 2 minute mark in "Black & Proud" is pure fucking magic, and sets the stage for the rest of the demo from a band that should have received far more mainstream accolades than they ever did. "Time To Decide" could be a lost track from a John Hughes movie montage - the scene where the kid really comes into his own as a young adult and comes out of the song with the self confidence to really stick it to his detractors and stand up to the cool kids. The UK political punk fury hasn't left the band though, "All God's Christians" is a two minute ripper that borders on crossover until the bridge comes in with it's melodic guitar leads (once again: THE CULT and THE ALARM are all over this thing in the guitar department). The demo closes with a quality five minute jam that is transfixing from start to finish, total MOB/ZOUNDS styled dreary UK anarcho with soaring vocals and ethereal guitars. There is virtually no edge to these songs whatsoever, and if I had a complaint that would certainly be it, but I grew up a new waver, and these layers of decidedly untough vocal melodies are suiting me just fine this morning.
2 comments:
wow this is really great!
re-upped
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