The Hiss - 'Panic Movement' (Loog)
3/5
By: Toby L
Snarling, intensely groovy and immensely influenced - The Hiss come at you with their debut-LP 'Panic Movement' sounding akin to the Gallagher brothers with serpents lodged amidst their crusty undergarments.
And, whether this is a pointer of favourability or not, has been a hot point of contention. Signed to an ex-journalist's new major-label imprint - the friskily-titled, Loog Records - this rising, Atlantic four-piece have been sanctioned as 'rock 'n' roll heroes' by some - albeit from this very relevant scribe's old deal-team at his former publication... Corruption? Indubitably.
But is it warranted? In parts. For, in their favour, The Hiss rattle and shake with little restraint, every segment of their eleven-track debut surging and grappling desperately with a psychedelic rock 'n' roll hook, a pleasingly yelpy vocal from frontman Adrian Barrera, and the sort of angry assurance that endeared us to, say, er, Oasis in the last decade.
'I doubt that I could raise the dead,' lies Barrera during debut-single 'Triumph', which evokes The Black Crowes monging out with Bob Dylan backstage at a sun-drenched Glastonbury, prior to a shameless lift of The 'Stones just as the track slumps to a mammoth, clichι-ridden climax. Almost paradoxically, the following 'Listen To Me' is a markedly indie-fied serving of Britpop at its most shamelessly melodic and strumming.
So, they're better when it's more swagger than blagger, as demonstrable of a rousing, nihilistic blast of grunge-punk such as The D4-esque 'Back On The Radio' and a rabid, chomping at the bit 'Riverbed', where the sound is taut, urgent and very slightly primal. Presumably, proof of their altered state, 'Ghosts Gold' is a trippy, not entirely coherent warble of harmonica/melodica-dosed crankiness, a rare slow-down prior to the inevitable, bass-crunching crescendo of a finale - which arrives in the form of an up-tempo BRMC-blast in 'Brass Tacks'.
By the end, you're not so much left in a state of dizzying enticement as you are trying to finish scribbling down a list of all the bands that The Hiss must have torn through in order to form such a compilation.
Not that inspiration from others is a hindrance. Seemingly, The Hiss have cherry-picked from some of the finest out there. And though the tact may not have resulted in a correspondingly classic debut, it has at least spawned a fervent entrance into the rock 'n' roll canal for Barrera and co. that'd be hard to ignore - especially now they've arrived.
Artists in this article: The Hiss
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