Until now, Pulled Apart By Horses have built their reputation on sheer silliness and chaotic, injury-prone live shows.
But, somewhere between festival main stages and huge support slots, they also became a big band. Written with this in mind, that’s where third album ‘Blood’ comes in.
The Leeds quartet can’t rely on demented carnage or punching lions in the throat anymore, and this time they’ve reined in the daftness and upped their craftsmanship.
The unpredictability that’s always made them so thrilling has been ironed out a little – but instead, what we have is 12 tracks that hang coherently as an album, meatier and more focused.
You can still hear Nirvana’s squall on the dirty guitars of ‘Skull Noir’ and The Jesus Lizard’s grim ferociousness on ‘ADHD in HD’ – but now there’s a confident swagger, too, strutting around the sexy chorus of ‘Lizard Baby’ (video below) and the bouncing Arctic Monkeys-like bassline of ‘Medium Rare’. Elsewhere, the frantic, OTT ‘You Want It’ is brilliantly silly.
The bared teeth and balls that made PABH so loveable in the first place are still splattered all over ‘Blood’, but for the first time it sounds like they have a plan, rather than choosing to thrash the hell out of themselves and simply hope they get out alive.
7/10
Words: Dannii Leivers
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Listen to ‘Blood’ via Deezer, below…