Album Review: Shihad – FVEY

Shihad FVEY vinyl record cover
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Last time I saw Shihad play was on Boxing Day a few years back in Lower Hutt – the eternal dwelling place of the bogan. The band played a few songs from each of their releases in chronological sequence, starting with their début EP Devolve, and concluding with their most recent album, Ignite. It was a good cross-section of their history, showcasing their sound as it evolved from the speed metal of their formative days through to the more radio-friendly songs of recent years. The downside to this was that as the show progressed it became clear that Shihad’s later releases pale in comparison to their more aggressive early works. In my opinion Shihad had peaked with The General Electric.

This is why FVEY (pronounced Five Eyes) makes me so happy. It’s a nod to Churn and Killjoy, but with the use of production and mastering technologies 20 years more advanced. Listening to the album teaser was enough to make my hairs stand on end. Being able to the blast the finished product on 180 gram vinyl is a glorious experience.

No doubt Jaz Coleman played a part in this. His influence was unmistakable in the brutal industrial metal that was Churn, and lingering traces could still be felt in the raw anger of Killjoy. And once again the Killing Joke singer has returned to the producer’s chair to impart his wisdom. This record was one of the last to be recorded at Coleman’s York Street studios, allowing the band good use of one of New Zealand’s premium recording studios.

Coleman can still be heard in this record, both musically and thematically.  Title tack ‘FVEY’ sounds like it could comfortably be part of Killing Joke’s 2010 release Absolute Dissent, and some of Jon Toogood’s lyrics resemble those of the songs on Killing Joke’s MMXII.  Anger, distrust of the authorities and conspiracy theories seem to be common themes throughout.

It’s raw but at the same time clean. They’ve captured the heaviness without muddy distortion. Not an easy feat, seeing as how the guitars are drop-tuned so ridiculously low. Frontman Jon Toogood has described the record as “intense” and “blistering”. He’s not wrong.

Where did the band re-discover this energy and determination? The album title FVEY points towards paranoia over our international spy network. Maybe something to do with a fat German millionaire buying off our politicians? No doubt Shihad are riled up about various social injustices, and FVEY is the creative by-product of these feelings.

I’ve always loved Shihad. I own every album and watch them live every time they come to town. It was always a given that I’d be buying FVEY. But this time round I feel safe recommending this album to my friends, not something I could have said about the band’s recent outputs like Ignite or Beautiful Machine.

Killjoy-era Shihad is back in form. And with an accompanying tour promised; I find this very exciting.

 

Joseph James

14 thoughts on “Album Review: Shihad – FVEY

  1. Amused To Death

    If you think this mastering was good you really need to get some new ears. It’s over compressed and distorted almost all the way through. It’s as bad as Death Magnetic etc etc.

  2. Amused To Death

    I missed that this was in reference to the Vinyl – my bad. The CD/Digital download versions are horrendous and brickwall limited, casualties of the loudness war. The vinyl I am yet to hear so can’t comment – I am sure it will sound a lot better, vinyl has it’s own constraints (which for the most part keep mastering engineers honest and prevent the Record company or ignorant musicians from ruining stuff just because they can.

  3. Amused To Death

    And to describe what is happening for the lay person here – there is a a point when you turn up your stereo where your speakers or amplifier can’t produce sound cleanly, this results in “clipping” which means that the louder sounds are distorted, if you keep going past this point everything becomes distorted and isn’t as discernable as there is no differentiation between loud and soft. What has happened when this has been mastered for the digital realm is someone has turned up the signal way too loud into a plugin designed to brickwall limit (mimicking the amp/speakers in my analogy) to get the CD to playback as loud as possible. This process has stripped the dynamics and ruined the sound that SHihad would have spent hours capturing in the studio. To sum it up – You would NEVER let a drumtrack/guitars/bass/vocals be recorded in studio if they sounded like this – you would reduce the gain, move the mic back if there was too much spl etc, an engineer would go out of his way to remove any chance of an unintended sound making it’s way to the tape/daw. Then some cunt has taken all that work and shit on it just before it was sent to be mass produced on CD.

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