Referencing Mark E Smith, HP Lovecraft and Elizabethan mystic Dr John Dee, These New Puritans’ debut is gleefully bonkers. This highly touted UK goth-pop band are led by shamanistic vocalist Jack Barnett, whose gravel-voiced delivery suggests Nick Cave auditioning for Macbeth. Against a backdrop of droning, spasmic guitars, shrieking synths and stabbing bass riffs, he intones semi-spoken monologues about “swords of truth”, the cosmic power of numbers and time-traveling dopplegangers. “What’s your favourite number, what does it mean?” Barnett demands on ‘Numerology (aka Numbers)’ whilst tribal drums groan and shudder in the background; “China, India, my future – scatter scatter,” he howls on ‘Infinity Ytinifni’, which might read as a prescient commentary on the rising economic powerhouses of Asia if it wasn’t so balls-out deranged.
Elsewhere, These New Puritans dabble in furtive electro-rock (‘Navigate-Colours’ answers the question: what would nu-rave sound like coming to you from the bottom of a very deep dungeon?) and, on ‘En Papier’, actually sound vaguely like Arctic Monkeys.
If there’s a criticism, it’s that they arrive slightly late to the indie-goes-occult hoe-down. Both Klaxons and Pop Levi have already mined similar territory with their nods to Aleister Crowley, The Book of Revelation and, yes, John Dee. The difference is that These New Puritans, part of the Southend art-pop scene that spawned The Horrors, don’t merely name-check Armageddon, they channel it. Giddy with end-of-days rapture, Beat Pyramid is a gorgeously gloomy puzzle box, a record salted with secrets, visions and intimations of wonder.