Hungry Ghost, the third album from Brisbane band Violent Soho is an auditory trip down memory lane, specifically through 90s rock. Don’t get me wrong, I’m getting pretty fed up with the resurgence of everything 90s at the moment (even though I may have purchased some overalls the other day) but Violent Soho seem to do it reasonably well, and are at least emulating GOOD ’90s bands for the most part.
The album’s opener ‘Dope Calypso’ is a great track, it really got me into the feel of what was to come. It does immediately present the two greatest problems of the album though, one of which is Luke Boerdam’s incredibly annoying voice, the second being the way in which Violent Soho seem to be able to capture all of your favourite ’90s bands, but end up being a slight disappointment simply because they aren’t the bands that they’re emulating. I got over the former by about the third track as Boerdam’s voice does seem to fit into the band’s style pretty well (and hey, we all learnt to tolerate Billy Corgan’s weird voice), but the latter sticks around for the whole album.
The band do come through with some really solid tracks, ‘OK Cathedral’, ‘Liars’ and the closing track ‘Hungry Ghost’ really caught me, and all in all the album is really enjoyable and captures some of the best elements of grunge-y 90s rock.
I guess this isn’t really a criticism as every band has a plethora of musical influences, but it does seem to be a little too easy to attribute different tracks to specific bands that they sound like, with very obvious influences coming through from The Pixies, Nirvana, The Superjesus, Blink 182, and I was even hearing some Britpop themes working their way in. Violent Soho obviously have pretty good taste when it comes to ’90s bands, but this track-to-track identification of their musical influences does seem to take away a little from their ability to be incredibly original.
I did really enjoy this album, and ‘Dope Calypso,’ along with a couple of other tracks from the album, is definitely making its way onto a playlist or two of mine, but I guess I’m having a hard time figuring out how much of my enjoyment came from Violent Soho themselves, and how much was just coming from my pre-existing love of ’90s rock music.
If you’re into ’90s music, you’ll probably like this one for a bit of a trip down memory lane, and to remind you to have a re-listen to your favourite albums from The Pixies and The Superjesus, and if you missed the glory of ’90s rock then this album might just be a revelation for you. I hope to hear more from this band, but also to see a bit of a distancing from their rock-God influences to more of a sound that they can call their own.
7/10
Reviewer: Louisa Bulley