ALBUM REVIEW: Hey Colossus – Heaven Was Wild

The last Hey Colossus album, In Blood, emerged in the wake of The Awfulness and came on the back of problems within and without the band. It’s a great record, epic and serious, but it sees the band at their most grave and portentous and it felt a little like an ending.

Praise be that the new record is a very different beast: tested on stage, recorded quickly and with the band sounding like they might be having a great time, Heaven Was Wild absolutely slaps. Working with a manifesto of ‘BE A BAND’ the HC6 feel utterly reinvigorated here, back in love with the messy, noisy joy of a band that has more guitarists than a band really needs, but could probably do with a couple more, just in case.

Opener Cannibal Forecast is a perfect statement of intent – a surging chorus of riffs that’s going to sound amazing when they finally get round to playing it live, vocalist Paul Sykes sounding a little like Iggy in places, the whole thing a heady rush. Roses starts all Fugazi-taut, explodes into a genuinely thrilling, bass-driven monster with a nagging guitar refrain and Sykes has never sounded more in control. It roars along for four minutes before stuttering to a halt. Keeping it in the Wrong Speed family, Claire from Objections and Nape Neck is a perfect foil to Sykes on Clock, as are Angi and James from Fists on the later Party Of Fleas. Clock is also a perfect example of why having three guitarists is such a great move – killer hooks for days. Death & Deliverance probably rages hardest, a proper garage tear-up, but is also madly catchy. Things calm down a little for the middle tracks Runaway Heart and People You Long To Forget, while Party Of Fleas is a moody epic. Things are back in the red for You’ll Rot before things collapse into a heap on the brooding The Spiders Line.

You never know what’s going to come next with Hey Colossus – this is their fifteenth album and they’ve covered a lot of bases. But if Heaven Was Wild is a palate cleanser, a restatement of the band’s basic ethos, that bodes well for what’s to come. And it really does rip.