On first track, ‘follow the smoke’ Invasion look set to be another post-rock band in the vein of Isis so it’s something of a kick in the gut to find that the second track ‘conjure war’ comes thrashing in on a tidal wave of painfully distorted bass topped off by a vocalist who sounds like Grace Jones possessed by the ghost of Sid Vicious! Absolutely vicious it’s over before you’ve even managed to re-order your senses to deal with the onslaught raging from your speakers. ‘Alchemy’ continues in much the same vein, all phased guitars, pummelling bass and the strikingly unconventional voice of Chan Brown. ‘Spells of deception’ offers a welcome change of pace, with a bizarre disco beat propelling the thing along at the speed of light and a harmonised vocal that is as compelling as it is terrifying.
‘Rainbows’ maintains the hectic voice, coming across like the Prodigy recorded in the garage of your favourite punk band. It’s a hyper-active, multi-coloured, distorted bomb of a track that gets under the skin after a mere couple of listen despite the overt heaviness oozing from the massively distorted guitars. ‘Cursed treasure’ slows the pace down with a riff that is almost doom, before the drummer gets tired of trying to hobble this ADHD-infected monster and crazed rhythms send the track into orbit. ‘Kings’ is somewhat more conventional (although conventional still sees the band trying to out rock Iggy Pop and doing a pretty damn good job of it), a chugging rocker that flies past and crashes into ‘moongazer’ which suggests the bassist has a thing for Queens of the stone age when not chucking out massive swathes of bottom-end brutality. ‘Invasion’ is fast and deadly, laden with effects and utterly nuts. It’s also utterly brilliant, so that’s alright then.
‘Evil forest’ sees us entering the final segment of the album. A rapid-fire track that will be furiously brilliant live, it’s a track that gets the adrenalin surging in time for ‘six red wizards’ which spends the first 30 seconds of it’s 90 second run-time awash with synth which leaves the final 60 seconds moving at roughly the speed of light – kind of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s jamming on Slayer covers…. Final track ‘Chaos and the ancient night’ is a slow, doomy, instrumental that closes the record in suitably mental style.
It’s nice to be able to say that I’ve never heard anyone quite like Invasion, a comment that is increasingly rare (or increasingly disingenuous depending upon how you look at it) but this band really are unique. Everything from the vocals to the insanely heavy sound the band cultivate stems from their own twisted imaginations and it rules. Furious, heavy, crazy and without peer, Invasion deserve to go far. Find, listen and love.
