Album review: Flood of Red: 'Leave Everything Behind'

FLOOD OF RED: 'Leave Everything Behind' (Dark City)

Flood of Red are a difficult bunch to pin down. Their penchant for the tenants of post-hardcore, marrying riff-splattered lead and choppy rhythm guitars with introspective and melodic vocals, tends to find them sitting comfortably next to scene dahlings like We Are The Ocean and The Blackout, but debut album 'Leave Everything Behind' is a far more complex and diverse listening experience than such comparisons suggest. As with many who hail from the murky mists of bonny Scotland, their sound seems to have a grounding in the social climate from whence they came; like the Biff, Twin Atlantic, Idlewild, Sucioperro and about a dozen others, they just can't seem to escape the innate melancholia and dereliction of their surroundings.

This eerie undercurrent runs through the course of the record, and it's manifested in the unusually scuzzy nature of much of the music. While the guitars are certainly heavy enough to give your head a good seeing to, they also sound distinctly wayward, as if they've been swept up in a hurricane before being unleashed on your poor, unsuspecting ears. Tracks like 'The Harmony' and 'A Place Before the End' threaten to envelop you in their windswept, Glasvegan sonics, but the process is a distinctly delicate one: Jordan Spiers's lilting, wailing vocals feel rather like a friendly hand guiding you through this cruelly melancholic world, the bitter chill and unforgiving winds of a Glasgow winter, and it seems all the more welcoming and fascinating for it.

Flood of Red have a fondness for the playful too: current single 'Home Run (1997)' starts life as a marathon sprint, a jaunty, slightly punky slice of the anthemic, before hitting the wall and transforming into an aggressive behemoth of noise, standing stock still but shattering all of our earlobes. Then there are the more multi-layered moments - 'Like Elephants' and 'I Will Not Change' are colossally epic slow-burners that build and build before exploding in a haze of fuzzy noise rock. The band centre the tracks on low-key piano pieces that sound highly evocative; 'Elephants'' is haunting and disconcerting, while '...Change' has a more heartbreakingly gentle motif that complements the track's negative metaphors very well. In fact, it's essentially Brand New's 'Daisy' (the song, not the album) writ even larger.

At fourteen tracks, 'Leave Everything Behind' does sometimes feel a little bloated; by the time we get to '...Fell Point' and 'Hope Street', things become rather familiar, but on the whole, this is a highly assured piece from a band who are quite clearly light years ahead of the majority of their peers. There's intensity, diversity and a surprisingly skilled grasp of evocation; at times, you can feel the weight of the band's experiences bearing down on the record, like a millstone slung heavily around its neck. It's a highly fulfilling recipe and one that Flood of Red would do well to hold on to; definitely ones to watch out for. (8/10)