Angels and Devils

On Angels & Devils, Kevin Martin pushes farther and harder than ever before – and it's his strangest ideas which beguile the most.

The long awaited return by The Bug is certainly a difficult listen but it’s not impenetrable. Instead, it’s the sort of music that demands your attention and you can’t help but become enraptured by it.

Angels and Devils is an album inextricable from intense, looming, pounding despair, and no matter how far away Martin manages to pull himself the blackness always comes back.

The angels side earns its name via slow-burning, lush, and dubbed-out numbers ... [The devil side] is where London Zoo fans will find their long-awaited fix, deep within the hard-hitting beats, chest-shaking bass synths, skittering hi-hats, and violent dystopian vision that makes that album hold up so well.

It’s an impressive display, but the contrast between the two sides is so vast they could easily be two different records.

Short of their obvious opposition, there is little here in the way of meaningful tension between the Angels & Devils.

Sure, there are a few moments where the record doesn’t maintain the highs it reaches throughout, but it’s still a relatively enjoyable album front to back. Each track makes its presence essential to the record’s narrative, even if it’s not a memorable moment on its own. 

When the tempo and aggression are dialed back, the dynamic turns; Martin’s still a talented sound designer, but the whipping, centrifugal force that binds his tracks together is missing. That force is largely absent for the first six songs of Angels & Devils, and the album is trying as a result.