Released:
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A stunning portrait of despair morphing into beauty.
‘Album’ of ‘the Week’
Label: Big Scary Monsters
Released: 17th March 2017
Rating: ★★★★
That question of “Are You OK?” is a simple yet giant step – an answer can open up thousands of further queries. For Sorority Noise, that’s exactly what ‘You’re Not As ___ As You Think’ is, an album that from start to finish challenges everything from death, heartbreak, religion and those darkest moments with an unfaltering honesty that manifests itself as either an uncontrollable scream in the face or a sombre, silent look in the mirror. In both ways, it’s incredibly powerful.
Opening himself up to the world, frontman Cam Boucher’s pain is strewn across the record, from ‘No Halo’ and its sledgehammer of unravelling grief that finds him crying out that “if there’s a race to heaven, I’ll always come in last”, the chilling questioning of God in the light of death and addiction in ‘Second Letter From St Julien’ and the process of coping with life after the death of a close friend with ‘Disappeared’. It’s a record that trades in taking the immensely personal and delivering it in such a way that it forces you to take notice. ‘A Portrait Of’ captures that balance perfectly, raw to the bone and heavyweight in its intensity – summarising a record and a band that embraces the darkness and paints it into something undeniably moving.
Loud, ferocious and seismic in both sound and meaning – ‘You’re Not As ___ As You Think’ is a stunning portrait of despair morphing into beauty, and one that captures what it means to be a human being in the face of everything. Jamie Muir
