Telling the tale of nine people who gave themselves to the fictional Rua river thirty years ago, The Brotherhood Of The Flood is an ambitious,
at times brilliant offering from the fertile hive-mind that is the Revelator Orchestra. Taking frontman Peter Murphy’s novel Shall We Gather At The River as fuel for the songs, their second record is an inventive, genre-bucking listen which offers many rewards.
Sonically the album owes a debt to art rock, movie scores and the ambient and folk scenes, calling to mind acts like the Velvet Underground and Akira Yamaoka over the course of 14 tracks. Murphy’s performances are part preacher, part slam poet, speaking his words rather than singing them, while vocalist Paula Cox’s tones add some warmth to the material (particularly on the industrial sounding ‘Billy Litt’). In some senses, the record is a Frankenstein’s monster. It’s unique and primal, ugly and beautiful, with composer Acko ensuring all the limbs are kept together throughout, stitching metal (‘Iggy Ellis’), Irish trad (‘The Lost Alice’) and more alongside one another. Dense, but not impenetrable, the Revelator Orchestra occasionally go off the rails (‘Owen Cody’), but when they hit their stride they sound like a band at the peak of their powers.
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