One of many few really radical rock bands of the twenty first century, Crippled Black Phoenix have amassed an enormous catalogue of music. Understandably, given the harmonious efficacy of their present line-up, they’ve elected to re-record and rework quite a few previous songs, reclaiming them for the current day. What might have been a simple odds’n’sods assortment is known as a new studio album, albeit one with flagrant echoes from the previous.
CBP mainstays Justin Greaves and Belinda Kordic have navigated their method by way of a few years of turbulence – significantly relating to personnel – and so The Wolf Modifications Its Fur However Not Its Nature endeavours to determine contemporary variations of low-key classics, gently banishing any half-remembered dangerous blood and clearing the decks for a brand new period of livid creativity that truly started, in reality, with 2022’s double set Banefyre.
Much less a stopgap than an vital adjustment of CBP’s musical focus, it’s the proper car for celebrating their twentieth anniversary. It begins with a shocking rebirth for one in all their most interesting songs. We Forgotten Who We Are initially appeared on 2012’s I, Vigilante, and is arguably the one music right here that requires little tinkering.
That stated, the brand new model is much more grand and gritty than its forebear; and Kordic and co-vocalist Justin Storms’ twin efficiency is a masterclass in blended tones and two-way chemistry.
Equally, Tune For The Unloved (initially titled Tune For The Beloved, from 2009’s The Resurrectionists) ebbs and flows over 14 blissfully dynamic, spiritually enriching minutes, rendering the unique virtually solely redundant.
Beautiful new takes on 444, Whissendine and, particularly, a fulsome rejig of Goodnight, Europe (from 2007 debut A Love Of Shared Disasters) are lovely, bruising and subtly ingenious in equal measure.
Anybody who’s witnessed Crippled Black Phoenix performing Pink Floyd’s Echoes in full will know that this band are absurdly nice at cowl variations. A companion album, Horrific Honorifics Quantity Two – a sequel to the 2017 covers set of the identical title – is one other spellbinding assortment of subversive reinterpretations.
New Mannequin Military’s vitriolic anthem Vengeance is dispatched with zeal; Laura Branigan’s 80s super-hit Self Management is reborn as an aching cry for assist; songs by Nomeansno, Fugazi and Constructed To Spill are given the caustic, wall-of-guitar therapy; and Deep Purple’s When A Blind Man Cries exudes iridescent, emotional energy.
• The Wolf Modifications Its Fur However Not Its Nature and Horrific Honorifics Quantity Two are each on sale now by way of Season Of Mist.
