You might have come across Hello Lazarus before on gigs supporting the likes of The Xcerts and Flood of Red, and their self-titled EP brings four cherry picked tracks of the band’s material that are likely to leave you salivating for me.
Opener ‘Adore/Implore’ will take no time at all to get stuck into your head – this is a song with a stack of depth. The riffs alternative between the lively and simmering, and make it a great start to the EP. Lyrically, there might not be much rope – they wouldn’t take up much room on the album art) – but that’s not to throw dirt on the vocals, as they land with the right level of punch to counter the instrumentation.
After that, ‘X Marks’ brings high energy delivered in a laid back fashion, and with its with seductively calm lyrics, ‘Before The Lies’ show’s Hello Lazarus’s chiseled chin side. It’s a heavily guitar based song, with little input vocally. With great dynamics on the track, the subtlety of the shift in tempo is clearly what Hello Lazarus are best at.
‘Ride And Seek’ becomes better listening as the pace lifts off the ground, but even when it has it fails to compete with its predecessors. That said, this is merely four tracks of what Hello Lazarus can do, so this self-titled effort is a great listening regardless of the slightly duff closer.
If the band are patient and wait for the right opportunities, it shouldn’t take them too long to build attentio
LUCY GOODWIN