REVIEW// Savages/ The Answer

Savages are back and they're not leading us in gently 

On their second album Savages aim was simply to write "the loudest songs ever", no mean feat for a band who's already raucous debut drew comparisons to Joy Division and Siouxsie Sioux.
But, The Answer, the first track to be taken from new album Adore Life, released on January 22nd, is an all together more punishing affair.

Abrasive guitars cut through frontwoman Jhenny Beth's shrill cry of "If you don't love me you don't love anybody", underpinned by thundering drums, as though they are declaring sonic war on the world.

It's a sound that veers on the edge on violent, suggesting the band have taken more than a few cues from last year's collaboration with Japanese psych-rockers Bo Ningen on Words To The Blind.
It's what makes The Answer less of a statement of intent as a bombastic rallying call to post-punk arms.

Prepare your eardrums, Adore Life is gonna be loud.

Savages + Bo Ningen // Words To The Blind

Two of the year's most forward-thinking bands come together in performance art project

Savages first encountered Bo Ningen in the most unlikely of settings - a desolate pub deep in the North Yorkshire wilderness, since then they have been cropping up all over the latter's songs - Nichijyou and CC. Most collaborations between bands end there, but the East London based musicians decided to take it one step further, in the form of a 37-minute long performance piece.

Words To The Blind is inspired by the Dadaist concept of  'simultaneous poetry', first performed at Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire club in 1916. The poem is based around conflicting multilingual voices that eventually become incomprehensible. 

Savages frontwoman Jehnny Beth speaks in her native French, and Bo Ningen's Taigen Kawabe in Japanese. Their whispers are the calm before the storm, as they give way to barrage of dark, sonic noise, that sometimes veers on the edge of violent. The resulting chaos is reminisant of Bo Ningen's psych rock at it's most acidic. 

The two bands first showcased their work at London's Red Gallery on May 29th 2013, taking to the stage in a U-shaped formation to resemble a battle. This, and the desire to immerse the audience into a musical warfare that is punishing, eerie and hellish - at times all three, makes WTTB become more of a unique performance-art project than a gig. But that is what sets Savages and Bo Ningen apart from their post-punk peers - an appetite for musical anarchy.