aaamusic | On 04, Mar 2012

‘Anyway Your Children Will Deny It’ is the brand new instalment from Italian three piece Father Murphy. Delivering a disc of exhilarating vocal harmonies, low church organ themes, and flipped out heathen tantrums; ‘In The Flood, With The Flood’ groans like a contorted, Satanist church service; ‘Don’t Let Yourself Be Hurt This Time’ pounds sluggishly through a series of industrial clangs with what sounds like a pagan ritual is being performed in the background. Every track on this new album sounds as though it belongs to some great-lost ritual, as though the three Father Murphy musicians were bringing forth the secrets of some lost airtight order.

Without turning to forced black metal, it’s unlikely that you’ll hear a bleaker example of sonic simplicity all year. ‘Father Murphy’ don’t really do ‘songs’, and they most likely found it quaint rather than disturbing that Scott Walker used animal carcasses as percussion instruments on a recent album. ‘Anyway Your Children Will Deny It’ isn’t knowingly being obtuse, it’s naturally obtuse, and it doesn’t push boundaries, it simply doesn’t have any.

The thundering ending to ‘How We Ended Up With Feelings Of Guilt’ conjures up images of painful sacrifice to the Gods of music, yet this record doesn’t fit a particular time and place. ‘His Face Showed No Distortions’ gives the ears a run for their money, bashing them with a feel of a over worked atmosphere found in the worst of the industrial revolution. ‘It Is Funny, It Is Restful, Both Came Quickly’ shudders and quakes and unsettles, defying comparison and classification.

The outlook remains similar throughout this staggeringly gloomy and apparently experimental record. ‘Anyway Your Children Will Deny It’ is an almost fascinating and a very brave album. It won’t make the ideal Valentine’s Day gift (unless your other half resides in a cave and withers away in contact with direct sunlight), but if your DJ set is going down a little too well and you’d rather naff off home to bed, dropping in some Father Murphy could prove to be catastrophic.

Access these druids at myspace.com/reverendmurphy

 

Elly Rewcastle