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Album reviews Music

Failure

Nineteen years after Failure’s breakthrough album Fantastic Planet, Greg Edwards, Ken Andrews and Kellii Scott are awake again, having rubbed the sleep from their eyes and delivered an album that’s as rooted in 1996 as it is in 2015. It’s not easy to just pick up where they left off, but thankfully, good pop songs don’t have an expiry date, and neither does the titanic guitar tone Failure have become known for. 

The occasional “segues” throughout the record recall Fantastic Planet and although they help give it some variety and atmosphere, they also feel like too much of a throwback rather than helping The Heart Is A Monster stands on its own. Elsewhere the three-piece try out new tricks, with Atom City Queen finding Edwards and Andrews splitting vocal duties, playing up the song’s own call-and-response mix of dreaminess and sobering riffs. 

Top track: Atom City Queen

Failure play Lee’s Palace on Tuesday (August 18).  

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