Some reviews really do write themselves. While there is much to enjoy across a range of genres, nothing fires up the imagination like a band that transports you back to the days when you first started hovering over record store bins in search of something new and inspiring. Which is not to say that Prayer Group are a nostalgia act, but rather that there’s a raw unpredictability to their sound that taps into the same vein of inspiration that fired the likes of Nirvana and Sonic Youth, The Jesus Lizard and Fugazi, and it’s utterly enthralling from the moment the album positively explodes into life.
When you start your album sounding like Bleach-era Nirvana going head-to-head with the Jesus Lizard and Melvins, you’ve got my attention. Numbers is a bass-heavy blast of serrated noise, underpinned by tribal percussion and topped off with a vocal melange that sounds like a free for all at a Black Flag show. Neither punk nor sludge, it simply sounds like Prayer Group and it’s fucking awesome. It’s gone in under three minutes, and I’m hooked – sat on the edge of my seat and tapping restlessly against the nearby desk, a state of nervous tension that remains throughout the album. The Peak is no less savage. Driven by cruelly distorted bass and angular in its delivery, it sees Prayer Group drag the listener down a sonic rabbit hole for a savage beating, something the masochistic noise-addict will only enjoy. As exciting as the band’s opening gambit is, things get really interesting on the taut, dynamic Spent, which strips back the distortion and focuses on the interplay between rhythm and voice, recalling a harder-edged Deus in the process. It provides a touch of light to contrast the earlier shade, and it feeds neatly into the fleeting segue of Continuity 1, a track that could easily have come from a latter-day Fugazi album. Don’t get too cosy, though, as the band aren’t done with he surprise and, for all the noise on display, Michael Dose packs an almighty melodic punch, that makes for a memorable, even [whisper it] catchy listen.
Kicking off the album’s second half, World Of Mirror – World Of Mind is a darkly hypnotic piece of music, which the band allow to build slowly. With elements of Neurosis floating through the mix, a moment’s feedback provides all the time the band need to regroup and hurtle into full-on punk mode, all scattershot feedback and pummelling rhythms. In contrast, Speculative Fiction adopts a more sanguine groove, that is soon torn to shreds by the serpentine horror of Entitlement. Short and built around the sort of stop/start riff that makes Helmet so compelling, Entitlement is bruising, and yet quite unlike anything else on the album, rocking the listener with it awkward trimming and white-hot fury. Keeping things on the denser edge of the spectrum, the blazing rhythms of Reviewer are overlaid with huge swathes of wah-inflected guitar, while Fraud summons up a swirling miasma of alt-rock noise and paranoid discomfort, lyrically reminiscent of Henry Rollins’ self-lacerating opus Liar. It leaves the eight-second, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Continuity 2 to wrongfoot the listener once more, this time impersonating a song intro, only to pull an emergency stop, leaving the listener with no choice but to set the record spinning all over again.
I was sent this promo last night and already it has spun four times, with no sense of ennui setting in. Indeed, on each new listen, you notice only more elements previously obscured by the ferocious layers of feedback the band deploy. Savagely exciting, it’s a record that deserves to be clothed in sandpaper, if only to keep all the other records on your shelf at bay. Hell, if records carried health warnings, this one would be doused in yellow and smothered in skulls and crossbones. Tense, uncomfortable listening but with hidden depths, which belie the surface noise, Michael Dose is fucking astounding on every level. 9.5/10
Check out Reptilian Records for Michael Dose and similar awesomeness here.
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