Red Mass: Kilrush Drive
It’s been a long time coming. Red Mass released their first set of music in 2009 with the Red EP. The four songs were brutal slices of experimental art punk, signalling in a new era for Vucino , following the break up of legendary Montreal band the CPC Gangbangs. Since then, Roy Vucino (PyPy, Sexareenos, CPC Gangbangs etc..) has led his shapeshifting band through an endless release of EP’s, singles and one off’s through a smattering of underground labels. Without the weight of a full length album in their catalogue, I always feared that the tethers would snap and Red Mass would float away and disappear into the abyss. A depressing notion given that since the Red EP I’ve been hexed by these sounds and been witness to the band’s chameleonic live performances that are downright thrilling and consistently different.
Kilrush Drive arrives 10 years after that initial statement with 11 songs, displaying the same iconic artwork as the Red EP, with the original’s deep red cover replaced by a seductive pink, perhaps indicating that musically, the many robes this band has worn has come full circle. Where past recordings, barring perhaps the Semprini EP, lingered in the lower-fi spectrum with xerox primality, the songs on Kilrush Drive radiate like a neon warning sign for end times.
The production on Kilrush Drive opens up the band’s sound into the fourth dimension without losing the menace or tension that Roy so masterfully peddles in. Keeping with the communal spirit that has always laid at the core of Red Mass, Roy and Hannah, the band’s only true members, are joined by a rotation of musicians lending a hand including Mathieu Blackburn, Marc Alexandre Reinhardt and Simon Besre. Recording, production and mixing duties from Mingo L’Indien, Dave Smith, Alexandre Larin, Sebastien Perry, Martin Bisi Jace Lasek and mastering by James Plotkin all culminate in a fluid listening experience. Kilrush Drive plays like a complete work with a running narrative of corruption, deceit and addiction, where the institutions that society holds as benchmarks of good and virtue are exposed as the true evils of our time, where the true demons we face are those with power and influence …politicians, police officers and the clergy.
Saying that Kilrush Drive rests within the confines of post punk doesn’t do the album’s creative spirit justice, although fore bearers of that sound have been cited as influences. Classic Red Mass tracks Terrorizer, Saturn and Zoo Face have been given facelifts to accommodate where the band lay sonically in 2019. The raw force of the original Terrorizer still remains intact, but the Kilrush Drive version sounds like mechanical steam works, pumping and grinding, like a relentless industrial engine, until giving way to foreboding synths and a squall of guitars. The song exemplifies the creative approach found throughout this album. Saturn, perhaps one of the band’s best compositions ever, returns with distinct changes as well. After it’s trade mark guitar intro, Saturn’s drum’s pound and give way to dystopian synths, rising and falling around Roy and Hannah’s vocal interplay. Vucinos’ dual attack on the guitar solo, even more thrilling than ever.
A significant difference with the songs on Kilrush Drive are Vucino’s vocals, a confidence is exuded throughout these tales of shady characters and personal defeats with aplomb. In album opener In God’s House, guitars stab around gothic swirls of synth with a low end of bass and drums, weighty enough to leave pot holes in it’s wake.This lays the backdrop for a tale of greed that festers within our religious institutions. New song Crooked cracks a whip on abusers of power with mechanical drums, crunching guitars and sinewy organ lines while Vucino’s vocals hold a torch to the evil side of society’s holders of power. His delivery indicating he might be willing to spill blood. A synth string section sees the song come to a calm finale, but not before the guitars squeal their last gasp of breath, sounding like stampeding horses disappearing into the void. Fight Or Flight has the strongest bond sonically to the Red Mass of yore, a bare bones stomper that’s all spit and bile. Riots In Paradise nods to the band’s back catalogue of more experimental compositions, with Hannah reciting spoken word piece over a a robotic heartbeat. On Us vs Them Roy is armed with his guitar and a slice of hope as cavernous drips echo around him. Dark Days entices the listener with folk noire strumming, laying a bed for the narrator to lay down bare and bleak observations, the kind of weighty thoughts that might inevitably lead to one’s own destruction. As Vucino’s confessions twist and turn around imagery of loneliness and despair and the things that keep you up at night, his voice snakes it’s way into a snarled growl, ominous strings rise from the dirt at the closing of the song, punctured by Vucino’s guitar work. The general themes that Red Mass cover on Kilrush Drive have always served as subject matter to the disenchanted, but within the times we find ourselves in, it perfectly captures the energies circulating the globe today. I will be counting every second until the next instalment in the Red Mass catalogue. If Red Mass ever make their way to your city, you owe it to yourself to see this band live. Bring a friend.