Amidst the hype surrounding 2006 debut Tremors, Humanzi opted to pack up their leathers and move from their native Dublin to Berlin to toil over their difficult second album (Cold War trivia fans – the foursome laboured in the very room where the East German National Anthem was originally recorded and broadcast)!
Boasting a rather ominous marching band intro, opener ‘Hammer’ is pure vintage Kasabian – a very good thing indeed, especially considering drummer Brian Gallagher’s looking more and more like Serge Pizzorno with every passing day.
‘Black Sunrise’ is as moody as anything you’ll have heard from Daddies of gloom The Horrors or Fever Ray. Lead single ‘Bass Balls’ certainly has a lot of both, while ‘Straight Lines’ is unadulterated roughed-up fun and thankfully, Humanzi have left the tender riffs and introspective stalling to The xx, keeping well clear of the stock “Pity me, I’m a rocker with a heart” track.
All good so far, right? Well, sort of. Humanzi haven’t done anything by halves on album number two, but it did occur to me on more than one occassion that a punchy half-hour edit of Kingdom Of Ghosts would have made a truly whopper record (and I hardly ever say whopper). Yup, songs like ‘Amsterdamaged’ and ‘Just Like Bukowski’ are forgettable, while album closer ‘Shorter’ plods along with little instrumental adornment for seven lifeless minutes, despite an enjoyably quirky sample-heavy opening.
Hefty drum beats and heatedly growled vocals are the order of the decade for the Dublin foursome, meaning that at 50 minutes long, Kingdom Of Ghosts is often guilty of providing us with too much of a good thing. Still, I’ll happily take an overdose of ambitious cult rock over another four-year wait.