BAND OF THE WEEK: Therapy?
Over 30 years, sixteen albums, and still the same urgency and relevance.
You’d forgive Therapy? for relaxing a bit, right? After more than three decades at it, fast approaching the twenty album mark - not counting EPs, compilations, live albums, boxsets and all other stuff, of course -, many hundreds of live shows, having reached the absolute zenith of popularity in the 90s but not giving a flying fuck about it when the mainstream turned its head to the next shiny thing, always pushing the envelope both lyrically and musically, traversing genres like punk, noise rock and metal while singing about everything that matters, from mental health to politics…
But no, they won’t relax. Their new album ‘Hard Cold Fire’ is released today, as you might already be aware, and as soon as the main riff of abrasive opener ‘They Shoot The Terrible Master’ kicks in, you know the trio from the north of Ireland, despite the passing of years, are still as bitter and twisted (zing!) as they’ve always been. There’s no mention this time of any writers doing things to people’s sisters, but the literary references are still there, of course - the album title itself is taken from a Louis MacNeice poem, while there are other nods all over the place to the works of Beckett and others. “Dark Irish witticisms”, as frontman Andy Cairns, in a recent interview, has called these moments peppered throughout his writing, and the truth is that they are a perfect reflection of what the music itself is telling us.
While this is not necessarily the harshest or most impenetrable album of the band’s career, the anger and the disappointment at the post-Brexit landscape, the fucking Tories and the way we seem to be regressing to the very worst parts of our nature as people, is palpable at every moment. And while all of this is naturally informed by living in England (as Andy has for twenty years) or by being at least heavily influenced by the shadow of its politics and decisions, it’s a feeling that I’m sure you’ll agree can be easily transported to any place else you might be in at the moment. We are living in severely fucked up times, and everyone’s hopes for anything better seem to be dwindling. “You realize / That you're stuck with what you've got / And that noise /
Is the gates of the dream factory slamming shut / Nothing seems to make you happy / Nothing seems to bring you joy”, Andy bitterly sings on first single ‘Joy’, a typically Therapy?-esque deceptively simple rager, crushing riffs allowing an infectious melody to rise out, that wouldn’t be out of place on their beloved masterpiece ‘Troublegum’. It also gives me particular joy, pun sort of intended, that when asked about my DJ name (NO JOY), I will be able to say that it’s both a Khanate reference and a Therapy? reference too.
In fact, though there are more elaborate pieces, like the brooding ‘Two Wounded Animals’ or the massive, heartbreaking closer ‘Days Kollaps’, overall, I’d place ‘Hard Cold Fire’ more or less in the same league as, yes, ‘Troublegum’, but also ‘High Anxiety’ or ‘Disquiet’, for instance - high-octane, fist-pumping three minute stompers with gigantic choruses, which despite the many shades of grey and delicate subtleties you will pick up as you accumulate repeated listens (which you will), still hit you with the immediacy of a sledgehammer to the forehead.
See, you can look for bands that have been around for more than 30 years that are still this connected to the zeitgeist, this relevant both conceptually and musically, and this passionate about things. But you won’t find many. And none of them will rock as hard as Therapy?.
And yet, and yet, not all is hopeless. There are, after all, brief cracks of light, right? “All the days collapse as one / I need to find a place / Where bridges build not burn”, are the last words uttered on the album. Let’s all keep searching for that place together, shall we?
You can find Therapy? on Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
’Hard Cold Fire’ is out now via Marshall Records.
Andy Cairns is also a part of JAAW, whom we recently featured and interviewed.
