The Brute Chorus - Heaven

London’s adopted four-piece The Brute Chorus (originally from Cumbria and Somerset) release ‘Heaven’ on a wave of, well, some positive publicity. If such hype is to believed before us there would be an impassioned, varied and exciting single.

Unfortunately there isn’t. The song clings rigidly to the same bassline, hanging on for dear life like a frightened toddler. It starts with false promise, a simple but effective beat. The split second of silence before the chorus hints at a powerful crescendo, only for the moment to pass and the song to lull itself back into the same familiar bass guitar and drum stroll.

Over the monotony, the remaining elements of the band vie with one another, a lead guitar claiming dominance for a few seconds, to be challenged by an invasive hi-hat with no real victor and very little consequence. Having ploughed the verse, chorus, same again structure firmly into the ground the song takes a turn for the unexpected with a whispered-but-chanted build up, seeing real momentum gained for the first time in the song. However the intrigue passes, as the vocalist throws in an arbitrary lyric about “hell being cooler than heaven, anyway” and the song promptly ends, with a safe and ashamed retreat to that same stagnant bassline.

To strip Wild Beasts of grace or Cold War Kids of passion leaves the barest of bones, and ‘Heaven’ doesn’t survive that treatment.