It so happens I’ve caught Hull’s The Holy Orders a couple of times live, and their appearance at Galtres this summer proved to be one of the festival’s high points. While displaying an evident debt to Manic Street Preachers, the band’s raw power and unbridled energy makes them a compelling and exhilarating live act. But it’s often the case that studio recordings fail to capture the power of the live acts, stunting and diminishing the energy that’s packed into the material in a live setting.
Not so The Holy Orders. ‘For the Ears of Dogs to Come’ is everything that makes them a fantastic live act captured on tape, a gutsy, guitar-driven affair with tangible emotive qualities.
‘Walk / Don’t Walk’ begins gently, a picked guitar.... but it builds up, and builds up, the guitar that stutters and simmers in the background comes to the fore, and the track emerges as a lurching grunger. ‘Paper / Scissors / Stone’ marries a noodly mathrock guitar motif with a choppy Gang of Four edge to the anthemic rock of Manic Street Preachers (think ‘Enola / Alone’), while ‘Sherlock’ waltzes in with a dash of theatricality added to its britpoppy leanings – but it’s the big melody and the guitars that set it apart and keep it from becoming corny.
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The monumental ‘To The Gallows’ slows the pace and ups the emotional content, a full-blooded gritty anti-ballad with a slurring ‘la-la-la’ refrain that’s placed immediately before the album’s finale, the searing feedback-soaked rock ‘n’ roll ruckus of ‘Dance Motherfuckers’.
An album that doesn’t disappoint, and even exceeds expectations, it lands The Holy Orders firmly in the realm of bands to watch in the future. They’ve got the songs and enough fire in their bellies to break on through.
The Holy Orders Online
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