Album review: Coughin’ Vicars – Curses & Prayers

Rule one of making a new band look genuine is to not give a hoot about what other bands are doing. It’s also about having the sincerity to take inspiration from the things that are close to you, rather than whatever Punk Star A is up to this week.

Rips Of Rain, about an urban legend connected to Coughin’ Vicars’ Liverpool home, shows you both emotion and power, most of it furnished via the desperate, truth-seeking vocals of brilliantly named frontman Roman Remains. It’s one of several tracks that seem to salute proto-goth bands like The Cure, but cleverly avoid sounding like anything you’ve heard before.

Sure, it doesn’t always work. Opener proper Anti-Faction doesn’t bite as hard as it could, while Redefined Zero and The Act are songs that illustrate this unusual band’s wares from what feels like an unnecessarily safe distance. Plus, if any outfit was calling for, or deserving of, a more fulsome production, this is it.

But when it grabs you, it does so with vice-like grit. The sudden injection of Gabriella Rose King’s angered vocals to One Cuff Fits All and Doomsday Lottery promotes a sense that anything could happen right now. That thrilling freakishness even aligns the band with creatively volatile punks Jools or the more easily digested Hot Milk. Crazed sax, sounds skittering desperately like trapped flies, concludes The Reach and just furthers the notion that this is music without boundary.

The best thing about Curses & Prayers is that it represents an exciting birth. If Coughin’ Vicars can stick around, can grow the roots of their sound, can find more robust production to match their writing, they could develop into something more than special. Their sound, neither retro or vogue, is already close to unique and this debut, while flawed, must stand as a tantalising preview.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Killing Joke, Then Comes Silence, Zetra

Curses & Prayers is released on July 26 via Venn