Album review: Trash Boat – Heaven Can Wait
Trash Boat bristle with fury and fear on hard-hitting fourth album, Heaven Can Wait.
Trash Boat are staring into a crystal ball, and they don’t like what they see. Existing in the ravaged, pessimistic landscape of the modern day, with a future that seems hardly better, likely worse, has churned their stomachs as well as their emotions, if their fourth album is anything to go by. They’ve distilled their anxiety and fury into a record that isn’t trying to scrape for answers but sees them sit with their feelings and expel them. On top of that, they want you moshing at the end of the world.
The last time we heard from the St Albans quintet, on 2021’s Don’t You Feel Amazing?, they’d polished their sound into something more lithe, slightly sexy and defiantly more individual. Heaven Can Wait builds on this, but now it’s thicker, chunkier and crackling with angst.
A couple of these songs are some of the strongest the band’s ever put out into the world – filthy/RIGHTEOUS bullishly lives up to its name with its squalling riffs, while the stomping The Drip finds them squaring up to the chokehold of capitalism (‘Free markets are constructed, they’re not natural / But what do I know?’ scoffs frontman Tobi Duncan). Rather than preaching to the choir, however, they’re mostly here to help you mosh the dread away, which they do with a grin on the punchy yet witty Delusions Of Grandeur.
Every so often, however, it feels like Trash Boat have slammed on the accelerator a little too hard. The over-abrasive Liar Liar comes off slightly heavy-handed, whereas Be Someone is a touch over-processed. By contrast, when the band relax, and even go a little gentler, they fare better. The cloudy, layered head rush of Lazy brings the record to an unexpectedly atmospheric end, and Better Than Yesterday’s softer, more contemplative yet still biting tone is a clever change of pace, but it’s Are You Ready Now? that’s the apex of the record, a maelstrom of fervour, tension and dread with more nuance than they’ve ever had (and a masterful 20 second scream from Tobi to boot).
Even in spite of the occasional error, Trash Boat have never sounded so determined.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Boston Manor, Vukovi, Crossfaith
Heaven Can Wait is released on October 4 via Hopeless