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Therapy?<br />
Infernal Love<br />
Alt.Metal/Rock<br />
1995<br />
192Kbps CBR<br />
<br />
1.Epilepsy<br />
2.Stories<br />
3.A Moment Of Clarity<br />
4.Jude The Obscure<br />
5.Bowels Of Love<br />
6.Misery<br />
7.Bad Mother<br />
8.Me vs You<br />
9.Loose<br />
10.Diane<br />
11.30 Seconds<br />
<br />
Total Size: 66.8mb<br />
<br />
This just might be the greatest power trio album since Sugar broke up. It's <br />
every bit as dark and vicious as Therapy?'s more obscure earlier work, and yet <br />
the songcraft is far better. Some of these songs have pop hooks that sink in to <br />
the bone, even though they're harsh as 40-grit sandpaper. In the post-Husker Du <br />
grunge era, many bands tried to recapture the formula of mixing furious heavy <br />
metal with pop songcraft, and none succeeded as well as Therapy? has.The subject <br />
matter is not for the timid. But sometimes if you're feeling traumatized, the <br />
most healing thing to do can be to immerse yourself in the black worldview of <br />
someone more traumatized than you are... if that someone is a musician of the <br />
caliber of Therapy?'s Andrew Cairns.<br />
<br />
There's one thing that I should remember," sings Andy Cairns on 30 Seconds, the final song on Therapy?'s third full-length album, Infernal Love. Oh yes, what's that? "There is a light at the end of the tunnel," he yells. Well, now he tells us. After 37 minutes of <br />
unadulterated angst, pain and despair, Therapy? stick a vaguely optimistic <br />
little Post-It note on the door of the medicine cabinet. The previous album, <br />
Troublegum (1993), was a similarly unhappy affair, but then the neuroses were <br />
tempered by catchy, upbeat tunes and the Belfast band's famed sense of irony. No <br />
one will describe Infernal Love as bubblegrunge. It's as heavy and dark as <br />
Metallica, as morose and melodramatic as Pink Floyd's The Wall; and it's great. <br />
Though still a trio, Therapy? seem to have extended their sound in all <br />
directions. Fyfe Ewing's drumming, maniacal but machine-like on previous <br />
records, now pounds and crescendos all over the place, and Cairns's guitar is <br />
dominant and varied in a way it never was before. His voice, still essentially a <br />
hoarse little thing, is multi-tracked and distorted into the larynx of Satan on <br />
Me Vs You and Bowels Of Love, the tension heightened by a string section. The <br />
latter, in fact, sounds like Tindersticks, up to the point when you realise <br />
Cairns is singing "You poured . . . maggots down my throat/Until I choked". The <br />
narrowness which was always the group's downfall has been jettisoned at last. <br />
This album ranges from the pop accessibility of Loose (which could have been <br />
lifted from Sugar's Copper Blue) through heaving epics like A Moment Of Clarity <br />
to an actual Bob Mould cover, Diane, which is a work of pure dark genius. Their <br />
transformation is complete.<br />
<br />
Enjoy! :)
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