Album Review Bloc Party - Alpha Games

It’s an understatement to say that lot has happened since Bloc Party’s last album - 2016’s ‘Hymns’ - and on ‘Alpha Games’, the outfit’s sixth effort, their despair at the state of the world is tangible. Holding back neither lyrically or sonically, propulsive opening track ‘Day Drinker’ kicks things off at break-neck speed. The equally exhilarating ‘Traps’ is one of several tracks situated in the club, but it’s far from all glamorous hedonism - that song itself is a cautionary tale of being taken advantage of, while ‘The Girls Are Fighting’ is quite literally an observation of booze-fuelled violence. Neither is it all shrouded in seriousness, however, as ‘Rough Justice’ manages to dabble in drug-taking and quote ABBA in virtually the same breath. Better still is the one-liner from the resigned ramblings of closer ‘The Peace Offering’: “The first thing I lost was belief in the system / But in the end the system always wins.”