With the amount of work we’ve heard from him in the first eight months of this year, it’s to our pleasant surprise that MJ has had the time to return to his most familiar base and lay down a brand new Hookworms record. If it wasn’t enough working in the studio with The Soft Walls, Kult Country, The Magic Gang, Menace Beach and countless others this year, the 5-piece have prepared their sophomore album ‘The Hum‘, set for release on 10th November. Along with the announcement of their new 9-track record, set for release on Domino-Imprint Weird World, the Leeds group have unleashed ‘The Impasse‘.
The word impasse is defined as a situation in which no progress is possible, which in the circumstance of this track, feels like a contradiction. A brazen two and a half minutes of post-punk with psych undertones, retaining the inimitable Hookworms sound that made ‘Pearl Mystic‘ such a blisteringly satisfying listen only 18 months ago. The production once again sounds absolutely towering, the pulverising guitar lines surround the track in pure unfiltered fuzz as they enter seconds in, laying underneath the electric organ that presents the track with it’s pleasingly kaleidoscopic tone.
A collective of tumulting drums, MJ’s vehement vocals and 60s falsetto, echo soaked harmonies are a blink and you’ll miss it instant, the band powering through in a blur from verse to chorus. It’s seamless in it’s delivery and before you know it the industrial feedback that consumes the track filters through all too soon.
MJ is practically spitting bile once reaching the end, coated in distortion and as impassioned as on earlier releases. It’s within the chorus it steps up another level, the frontman displaying a substantial amount of snarl that builds on the tracks compelling nature.
The Hum may have come to a surprise to us, but perhaps it should’ve have. With the announcement of this release the group are showing a true prolificacy, and with the different work they’ve been part of in just over a year since their first, this record is set to be a development while retaining what was so enticing about them in the first place. No impasse here.