LIARS DRUM'S NOT DEAD ALBUM MUTE, EMI RELEASE: FEBRUARY 20, 2006 REVIEW: MARCH 24, 2006

Since their last, witch-obsessed album “They Were Wrong, So We Drowned”, Liars have relocated from New York to Berlin and dived even deeper into esoteric, ritualistic experiments. The once funky punk band has thus estranged themselves even more from not only the punk funk scene from which they emerged, but also from conventional song structures.

Where debut album “They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top” was a brief blast of spastic energy – all supercharged funk and primal punk – and “They Were Wrong, So We Drowned” sounded like a nihilistic mass – industrial noise coupled with kraut workouts and well hidden glittering pop shards – “Drum’s Not Dead” sees the band moving into a partly brighter territory. The main focus is on rhythm rather than song – many of the songs utilize multiple drum kits – and the rolling drums meet odd chants, electronic noise and even see the odd pop chorus rise from the sonic debris, but there’s also a light shining through it all that’s been absent before.

The result, though, is mixed, to say the least. There are moments when Liars achieve a transcendent beauty with very small means, yet others where the chanting is oddly moving, like neo-hippie Devendra Banhart locked inside a room full of very persistent drummers. There are however also quite a few moments where the music is going nowhere, the multiple drum tracks piling up until they collapse, the newly found brightness getting close to twee. Those are points where I for one start wishing that Liars would crawl back into the witch-filled darkness from where they came.

KRISTOFFER NOHEDEN