Album review: Talons – Hollow Realm
Hereford is not exactly known as fertile breeding ground for British bands, the only successful band to come out of Herefordshire’s county town so far is Mott The Hoople, though to be fair Mott The Hoople are very famous. However this may all be about to change as local six piece Talons ready themselves to release their debut long player ‘Hollow Realm’. With radio play and support from Huw Stephens and features in Q Magazine and Rock Sound, it’s fair to say hopes are riding high that Talons will make it down the road to success, though it’s going to be a tough journey. Talons, you see, are lacking something pretty significant in their setup – a vocalist!
Now I don’t usually go much on instrumentals, the occasional track is ok (I remember the Pogues had a couple of crackers) but a whole album? To be honest it wouldn’t normally have made it into my CD player, but in this instance I was in a rush to leave the house, so when I grabbed the CD to play in the car I left the press release behind and had no idea the band were instrumentalists. However as the album started and ‘St Mary Will Be The Death Of Us All’ snaked its way out of the speakers to be met with an explosion of drums the first thing that struck me was the enormity of the sound – it’s huge. Though they could be described as post rock the multilayered tracks also have large slices of hard rock (think Metallica) and progressive rock (where’s me cape?). Musically these guys are outstanding and as delicate strings sit side by side with pounding drums and crazy guitar riffs, the sound effortlessly fills the room and draws you in. Across the eight tracks the music rises and falls, accelerates and slows and gets very fucking loud indeed. There’s so much going on here that I can honestly say I didn’t even notice the lack of vocals until the fourth song, and by then it didn’t matter – I was hooked! 8/10
Mark Cousens
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