Savages - The Answer

For sheer brute force and physicality, Savages’ unforgiving post-punk always snatched the proverbial biscuit. Onslaughts of grating noise, and nuanced moments of quiet that sprang without warning out of the darkness, ‘Silence Yourself’ seemed to wrench the heart of Jehnny Beth’s confrontational live essence, and cram it into a volatile bottle of barely contained energy. It was a document, said the band, an album of a precise moment. On the evidence of this first preview alone, Savages’ second record will have that same beating, physical organ. They’ve also, centrally, evolved into a towering beast of an entirely different nature. With ‘The Answer’ comes new hunger, ever-more-urgent drive, and a keen understanding of exactly what Savages is.

Colliding with the abstraction and magnitude of powerhouses like Swans, ‘The Answer’s guitar riffs soar up into the air before plunging into razor-blades, drummer Fay Milton pelting the living shit out of everything within arms reach like a percussion-fuelled torpedo’s epicentre. In terms of aggression, this reaches the teetering top of Savages’ scale, but there also feels to be playfulness coursing through ‘The Answer’. Love might be the answer, but cramming insanity, limits, living, dying, breathing, playing, poetry, and boredom into one single song, Savages have the kind of boundless, all-consuming zest that matches up precisely with an album titled ‘Adore Life’. This is going to be huge.