Album Review: Helpless - Caged In Gold
Reviewed by Matthew Williams
Five years in music can be a long, long time for underground bands, as things change rapidly, and when you’ve produced a critically acclaimed debut album that was descried as “a filthy, grinding slab of aural abuse”, fans sometimes expect you to follow that up quickly with something filthier and more aggressive.
Helpless have bucked that trend, and with two new faces in the band to go alongside founding member Dan Couch (guitar and vocals) they have returned with 10 songs that are designed, well, to put it succinctly, melt your fucking face off!
The trio from the South West England, have found a new home with record label Church Road Records, and 'Caged in Gold' will be released to the waiting public, as the band are back with a vengeance to reclaim their title as the UK’s nastiest band. And when I mean they are back, they are really back, as this new release is more extreme and brutal than their debut 'Debt'.
If you want something fast and furious, then this is it. Opening track 'Wraiths of Memory' is a relentlessly punishing cacophony of noisy, blackened riffs, grinding away at your nervous system, and definitely not for the faint hearted, and this theme is continued throughout the album. The songs are full of technical skills, with both Simon Walker (bass and vocals) and Sam Trenchard (drums) adding their own unique talents, to bring you songs that will make you feel like you’ve been abused by a brick wall.
'Suppression' is a 2 minute onslaught of noise, followed up by the absolutely immense 'Another Sunlight', the songs are rapid and keep appearing so quickly, that is gives your senses no time to adjust to the magnitude of excellence that you are listening to. “Single File” is slow and eerie, giving you a sense of foreboding, yet with a gritty and dark realism.
The band have managed to produce songs that represent a cocktail of menace, noise and grind, mixed with intensity and intrigue, best demonstrated on 'Focus Group Extraction', wow, what a song this is, absolutely stunning, yet with more atmosphere and slower sections across the album, they have showcased their versatility.
They have taken lyrical inspiration from the book The Plague of Fantasies by Slavoj Zizek and although not from that book, the words “I believe the first duty of Philosophy is making your understand what deep shit you are in!” perfectly summarises what 'Caged in Gold' is all about, as this is scary stuff with a heavy dose of pragmatism, and Helpless are back to reclaim their crown.
