Short Reviews [The Fierce And The Dead - 2023 - "News From The Invisible World"]

TFATD are a band I have been reviewing for more than a decade, during which time I have been a huge fan of everything they have achieved, with their ‘Live USA 17 (RosFest 2017)’ being nothing sort of a masterpiece. Here we had an instrumental band who were creating monstrous riffs who were beloved by fans of space rock, prog and so much more as they distorted and fuzzed their way into people’s brains. Their last studio album, 2018’s ‘The Euphoric’ took five years to appear after ‘Spooky Action’, so really it should be no surprise that their fourth album took the same amount of time. What was surprising though, was that the singles released ahead of the album had, wait for it, vocals! It was still the same line-up, but just that bassist Kevin Feazey had taken on the role of lead singer – the rest of the band still Matt Stevens (guitar, keyboards), Steve Cleaton (guitar), and Stuart Marshall (drums). I was not a huge fan of the last single, “Photogenic Love”, as to me it did move the band too far away from their core sound, and I felt they had moved into an area which they themselves describe as a mix of Faith No More, Tame Impala, Smashing Pumpkins, LCD Soundsystem, Flaming Lips, Gorillaz and MGMT, which is not where I had ever expected them to be. However, while I am still not a massive fan of that particular sound (although it has definitely grown on me), when confronted with an album with so many songs containing vocals I have discovered that instead of taking something away from TFATD it has indeed added to their overall sound. That I still prefer their original sound is very much down to personal preference as opposed to as anything the band are doing wrong, and the more I have listened to this this more I have enjoyed it, it was just something of a shock when I first came across it. There are still the heavy riffs, the distorted and fuzzed sound which allows the listener to envisage the riffs as solid entities as opposed to soundwaves, yet there is now the additional element of Kevin’s vocals. In 2023 they describe their sound as a fusion of psychedelic rock, old metal records, post-rock, prog, broken analogue synths, and shoegaze. There is still plenty of their old sound there as well, just morphed and moved into new directions. TFATD are truly progressing and it will be interesting to see where they end up, yet here they have shown yet again proved they are one of the most dynamic and interesting bands in the UK prog scene.