WarTusk

The first These New Puritans album somehow managed to reach me, with all of its agro-prog numerology-dabbling dark fantasy glory. This was a group that didn't fit into the blog-dance climate, choosing to stake out space on the dance floor to play a D&D campaign to the death while their peers raved blindly around them. Now they've returned with a new record, Hidden, that, in keeping with its title, sticks to the shadows and this time chooses to rally actual demons rather than just fuck around with the thought.

 

  These New Puritans: We Want War

Take, for instance, "We Want War", Hidden's first single (and the album's first actual song). Lavishing in pipe organ and whispers, unsheathed swords and military percussion, the closest modern comparison (as in, something that wasn't played to usher men to their death during the War Between The States) I can come up with is "Tusk" the song-which is fitting, because Tusk the album is a perfect comparison to Hidden's lengthy, bloated but rewardingly punishing, fierce sound (we're not, of course, including any of the Christine McVie shit in this).  This is a matter of life or death, These New Puritans wants us to know-and it is. And it's impossible not to believe them, regardless of if the war is professional or personal, political or love-based. "Don't say that you want me," the song goes, "just tell me that you need me." "We Want War" commands the same.