Holy Fuck
Heaven, London
24/05/2010

Swearing, we seem to recall, is supposed to be neither big nor clever, but clearly that’s a piece of advice that got lost somewhere along the way for these gentlemen, since Holy Fuck are, from the very word go, both much more satisfyingly cerebral than a raft of University Challenge box sets and absolutely, unstintingly, ruddy immense. This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s encountered them in a home-listening environment, of course, but where they come into their own in the flesh is in the precision with which they unleash their veritable tsunami of noise: such is the calibre of firepower at their disposal, it’d be easy for them to lapse into the brilliant brutality of a KASMs or Factory Floor, but, instead, there’s a wilful intricacy that perfectly compliments the hunched-down thoughtfulness of their bearing and renders them a tad more charming than we suspect they’re aiming for.

Mind you, there’s no shortage of instances when they render resistance useless with frightening force. ‘Lovely Allen’, for example, is a vital centrepiece as, ostensibly, The Hit, but takes on a talismanic potency that calls to mind a post-rock purging of ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’, while the unsettling double-punch of ’1MD’ and ‘Red Lights’ has a desolate starkness and structural darkness that suggests they spent all of ’94 playing nothing but ambient-age Aphex Twin and Oval records (and what a call that proves to be!), while the relentlessly amazing ‘Stay Lit’ scoots along on all kinds of motorik chicanery while taking its oohing cues from ‘Johnny Remember Me’ and simultaneously redrawing both ‘Atlas’ and Maps. And the closing ‘Stilettos’ brings proceedings to a halt in staggeringly grinding, not to mention hypnotically unpleasant, fashion indeed. Little wonder some of the audience are treating this as borderline divine: Holy Fuck? Wholly fantastic!

Iain Moffat