One doesn’t like to dwell on football too much - these are indeed dark days for Grimsby Town, but as that old lush Jimmy Greaves said, it’s a game of two halves. As is this brilliantly eclectic lp.
In their excellent review of ‘Hymns..’, In Love With These Times In Spite of These Times’ rightly pointed out that there were plenty of small bands from the late 80s/early 90s who were lost under the rush towards baggy and then grunge. Such a band was Hellfire Sermons from Liverpool who released a few singles here and there between 1987 and 1993, all of which are collected here for posterity.
What’s so great about this compendium is it’s diversity. Starting off with tracks like ‘Freak Storm’ and ‘Quicksand’, they come on like a more angular, intelligent version of James, but by the time of ‘Sarasine’ and ‘Bill and Sarah’ it’s pretty clear that it was at the altar of the Pixies that they were worshipping.
Nothing wrong with that of course, but that’s not the whole picture. Liverpool has a famously incestuous music scene and it’s pretty easy to see where the Coral get their influences from when you listen to ‘H.O.N.E.Y.M.O.O.N’ - a kind of electric sea shanty.
The change comes around track nine - ‘Covered in Love’, a brilliant , tense, snake of a song with a chorus that Frank Black would love to be able to write these days.
I loved early James, and I adored the Pixies, so this is something of a treat for me. But Hellfire Sermons were certainly not copyists - think of them as innovators, and cherish this album.
This piece came from Tasty