Crusades - Perhaps You Deliver This Judgment With Greater Fear Than I Receive It (Album Review)
Friday, 08 November 2013
Written by Huw Baines
Crusades’ debut full-length, ‘The Sun Is Down And The Night Is Riding In’, marked them out as one of the most interesting bands to emerge in punk for some time, dragging behind it some pitch black lyrical themes and melodies that just wouldn’t quit.
Its follow up, and Crusades’ bow on No Idea, ‘Perhaps You Deliver This Judgment With More Fear Than I Receive It’, is a more focused record, one that finds the band on considered, but equally effective, form.
Based on the life of Giordano Bruno - an Italian scholar, philosopher and scientist burned at the stake for heresy by the Roman Inquisition in 1600 - it neatly parallels Crusades’ underlying philosophy, unpicking Christian dogma and combining unfamiliar subject matter with the familiar framework of melodic punk.
Recorded with Mike Bond at Pebble Studios in their native Ottowa, ‘Perhaps You Deliver...’ is a more restrained proposition than their debut, with the pace often slowed to allow the band’s grasp of atmospherics to take over. At its core, though, this is still a rollicking slice of of punk rock, one that retains the high-wire melodies that drew so many in initially.
After the opening theatrics of Exordium, The Torchbearer takes over and delivers the first of nine hook-laden treatises on Bruno and his legacy, all filtered through the fractured, layered lyrical style favoured by guitarist and co-vocalist Dave Williams. This isn’t a play by play of Bruno’s short time on Earth, it’s a collection of snapshots framed by repeated phrases and symbolism.
Crusades’ lofty goals have sometimes landed them the unwanted ‘pretentious’ tag, and it’s not all that hard to see why. The record was described before release as: “A meditation on the life of philosopher, heretic, poet and antichristian martyr Giordano Bruno as an archetype for the modern atheist, freethinker, artist, poet and lover.” But to hang your hat on that particular peg would be to overlook their success in drawing such complicated ideas together to create a record that not only works on a thematic level, but fucking rages when the volume’s kicked up a notch.
Beneath the blackness, Crusades are particularly sharp songwriters. Each song here carries melodic weight, with The Transport Of Intrepid Souls perhaps the best thing they’ve put their name to so far. ‘Perhaps You Deliver This Judgment With More Fear Than I Receive It’ is a heavyweight second chapter from a band that could soon be at the head of their field.
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