Hellfire

The Londoners freely cram genres and ideas into their concept album about death.

I can’t imagine what mood you would have to be in to casually put on Hellfire – it’s a commitment and a half to devote yourself to this experience.

Hellfire is absurd, self-indulgent, restless, ambitious and brutal. But it never feels forced.

There's something about the shape and dynamic of Hellfire that makes you want to play it again, straight away.

Appreciation of the album comes down to how much you’re willing to go with all this. Like Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! Trilogy, ‘Hellfire’ is at once goofy and high brow. A volcanic eruption of serious silliness.

The album rewards digging beneath its surface and influences, as it engages with rock’s history while simultaneously taking it in imaginative new directions.

Although less esoteric than its predecessor ‘Cavalcade’, ‘Hellfire’ is a fiercely experimental record that sees black midi teeter back and forth on a crumbling precipice, halfway between unhinged madness and art rock precision.

Call it avant-garde if you will (and it’s a certainty that some will find the album’s frequent gear-shifts too much to bear), but listening to ‘Hellfire’ delivers more musical thrills and about-turns per minute than few other records we’ve heard this year.

With their third LP Hellfire, Black Midi continue to put out adventurous and challenging music that keeps listeners on the tips of their toes.

Third album from London trio adds another gem to the crown of a band who are fast becoming one of the very best of their era.

The preposterously talented English band’s third record is pitched between clinical precision and crazed abandon.

Lead vocalist Geordie Greep sounds more like a delirious carnival barker than before, and the music brings to mind Mr. Bungle and Fred Frith more so than the King Crimson-isms of Black Midi's past work.

While still manic in its tempo-changing lunacy, Hellfire is more approachable and organised, as the production by sometime Björk engineer Marta Salogni asserts a certain order amid the vari-speed chaos.

From cocktail-lounge piano to thrashing drums, the British prog band make musical handbrake turns that are thrilling but hard to love.

Black Midi take a serious detour into pretentious overreach here.