For years, rock music has been stuck in a pattern of recycling past sounds and styles, but on albums like last year’s Calvacade, Black Midi seems to be up to something different. The influences on the band’s third album, Hellfire, are easy to spot but also fleeting. And while Black Midi’s eccentricity suggests that of ’70s bands like Magma and Gong (or even early Genesis), they’ve managed to craft something unique with their latest.
A concept album set during a war, Hellfire brings characters like Private Tristan Bongo and Sun Tzu to vivid life. “Eat Man Eat” relates a story about a gay couple on the run from military service and their homophobic captain, while “Dangerous Liaisons” and “The Defence” are sung from the perspective of a hired killer and brothel owner, respectively.
Black Midi’s lyrics suggest familiarity with the poetry written by British veterans of World War I, as well as Dickensian grotesquerie set in London back allies. “Welcome to Hell,” however, comes closest to an explicit political statement, with Geordie Greep singing, “To die for your country does not win a war/To kill for your country is what wins a war.”
Greep sings as though he’s inventing a new dialect or language, employing a speedy flow that allows him to get through reams of lyrics in just minutes. It’s impossible to make out all the words without a lyric sheet, though phrases stand out in the chaos. (Most notable is the use of a derogatory epithet by the aforementioned captain.) Greep contorts his voice into shapes that complement the band’s odd time signatures, shifting dynamics and rhythm, and bursts of sound like the fiery squall of guest saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi. Bassist Cameron Picton also sings, in a gentler style than Greep, but “Still” is as tuneful as the album ever gets.
Black Midi seems to have spent an evening listening to Lotte Lenya, Charles Mingus, and Converge and decided to combine all these influences, mixing cabaret, prog-rock, jazz, post-punk, and other genres. Hellfire flirts with an apparent lack of control, eschewing conventional rock structures and songwriting, but the band’s music is carefully planned out and crafted, relying less on jamming or improvising and more on deliberate songwriting.
Black Midi’s aesthetic may be old-fashioned—the band is blithely unconcerned with potential hit singles, and Hellfire is designed to be heard as an album, rather than chopped into playlists—but it’s 180 degrees away from the dourness of the usual prog-adjacent music. The album rewards digging beneath its surface and influences, as it engages with rock’s history while simultaneously taking it in imaginative new directions.
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