Demob Happy - Holy Doom

Rating:

'Holy Doom' is full to the brim with the best hooks the trio have come up with.

Demob Happy have come a long way since their 2015 debut ‘Dream Soda’. That album was young and zealous, and their follow up 'Holy Doom' takes a different turn.

After collective strain and suffering, the band took their emotions to their music in an album that explores the evil and virtuous duality of the human soul. And that’s exactly what you get with this record, a strikingly matured effort that is still incredibly conscious as its predecessor, and retains that infectious energy in poppy vocal hooks and grungy fuzzed out guitars.

Like a modern day, garage rock version of a 60s boy band, 'Holy Doom' is full to the brim with the best hooks the trio have come up with, and rock is still at the core. The pairing of the infectious beats on the candid ‘Loosen It’ before the sleazy surf rock echoes on ‘Fake Satan’, creates a sublime marriage that strikes this record as one that is both retro feeling and itchingly cool. ‘Running Around’ acts as the nexus, as the latter half of the record explores the ‘Doom’ in the record’s title: the dark and bubbling ‘Maker of Mine’, the head-spinning and straight up punk as fuck ‘Spinning Out’, and the jagged and the angular ‘Gods I’ve Seen’.

Ending on the jangly ‘Fresh Out Of Luck’, that’s like the sunny end credits on a film that has explored every high, and every low, Holy Doom is a record that is a testament to the journey it took to make it. An intellectual and all-embracing encapsulation of the godly and ungodly. Jasleen Dhindsa