Capricorns - River, Bare Your Bones
Re*lent"less\, a. Unmoved by appeals for sympathy or forgiveness; unrelenting; unyielding; unpitying.
I first encountered Capricorns at All Tomorrows Parties last year. It was Sunday evening, I was feeling somewhat jaded by the time they came on. Not for long though. They blew out the cobwebs and no mistake. As soon as I got home I sought out their back catalogue only to discover that it only consisted of 2006’s ‘Ruder Forms Survive’. As a result, I have been awaiting this follow-up release with some anticipation.
It delivers in spades. It is absolutely relentless. Listening to ‘River, Bear Your Bones’ is like being repeatedly hit in the face with a heavy object. But in a good way. The band don’t even take a breather until track four comes around and the preceding three songs pummel the listener so completely it’s scary.
After the brief let up of ‘November Suicides’, and when I say ‘let up’ remember that’s a relative term, they dive in to ‘Owing To Frogs’ and normal service is resumed.
If there is any criticism it’s the sameyness of a lot of the songs. ‘Chug, chug, chug, crash, bang’ is pretty much the formula for much of the album, but hey, it works for me. The only track that really veers away from this is the record’s closer, an eleven minute epic going by the rather brilliant moniker of ‘Drinking Water From The Skull Of A Hanged Man’, which starts out as a space-jam before descending back in to the brutal maelstrom in which much of the album resides.
Essentially, it’s a ‘does what it says on the tin’ kind of album. There are few surprises, but it does what it does with a ruthless intensity and, as it says in the definition, it’s unrelenting; unyielding; and totally unpitying. Awesome.
Top Tracks: 'Seventh Child Of A Seventh Child', 'Drinking Water From The Skull Of A Hanged Man'., 'Itkyokume'.
Released 28/07/2008 on Rise Above