Album Review: Hymns by Bloc Party

The latest release from the band most well known for their critically acclaimed 2005 release Silent Alarm returns from their indefinite hiatus with a brand new lineup, building on their unique sound.

This album is the band's first full length release in Four years, 2012's 'Four' marked the end of an era for the band after the departure of drummer Matt Tong and bassist Gordon Moakes at the end of 2015. This album will get a lot of hate for not being a Silent Alarm 2.0, one of the reasons I like this band so much is because they are constantly re-inventing themselves despite requests not to by many critics and I respect them for that.

 This album combines the electronic dance sounds from A Weekend In The City with the slow burners from their last EP The Nextwave Sessions. Their lead guitarist Russell Lissack has said that no synthesisers were used during production and that he relied heavily on his pedalboard, the song Living Lux, with it's overpowering reverbs and delay effects are evidence of this. By far the most harsh and non 'poppy' song on the album and my personal favourite track from the record. If you liked this song you will like Deerhunter's Cryptograms album, if you like this song you probably found the rest of the album pretty boring.

I wouldn't call Hymns a bad album, but it seems a little uninspired compared with Bloc Party's other releases, as a fan of A Weekend In The City, and even Four, this is an okay release but I feel like that is mostly due to the nostalgia of one of my teenage favourites releasing a new album.