Of all the musical genres to be revived, who would have predicted that prog rock would be exhumed and reanimated to come roaring back into fashion?
It's a musical style long deemed uncool. Demanding of both musician and audience, prog needs an almost superhuman level of skill and technical ability to perform and a high threshold for music that challenges everything you thought you knew about how songs should work to appreciate. Sometimes, capes are involved.
Which brings us to the UK's band of the moment, Black Midi. With more buzz behind them than a broken distortion pedal, this debut has just been nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize.
It's easy to hear why. Their punkish take on prog injects the sometimes stuffy genre with a youthful urgency and energy while the cartoonishly sinister, throat-tearing vocals from singer/guitarist Geordie Greep exorcises all the hippie-dippie astral s*** left floating around from the 70s.
As a record, Schlagenheim is loud, abrasive and challenging. There are few easy entry points, hooks and catchy melodies often don't arrive until after you've been hit with a wall of shifting time signatures, clashing key changes and noisy indulgence. But, like the best prog, what starts off as bewilderingly intimidating or just a godawful racket, gradually reveals itself and makes sense as you clock up the listens and your brain unravels what's going on. The songs Reggae, Western and Near DT, MI all repeat this trick.
