Shihad: Love is the New Hate

Herald rating: * * * * 

You've got to hand it to them. Coming back from the ill-conceived name change to Pacifier and subsequent change back, as well as again failing to find any traction in the United States, might have been the undoing of a lesser band.

But Shihad are made of sterner stuff. So too is Love is the New Hate. Generally it's a more aggressive, less conventional affair than the Pacifier album. If its predecessor asked you to Comfort Me, this one initially seems intent on shouting a lot about the state of the world and picking a fight over it.

But eventually it reveals itself as something of a consolidation album, one which takes various threads of the band's past stages and wraps them up together. It's an album that doesn't move them forward as much as key past albums such as Killjoy and The General Electric did, but it still sounds much more like Shihad - or the very idea of Shihad as a metal-bred band which has long since risen above its genre - than they managed last time.

True, it has some stadium-friendly moments, when frontman Jon Toogood can sound like he's auditioning for the job of the new Phil Collins (Saddest Song in the World, Dark Times). But there's a compelling power to the bulk of the songs and the playing behind them, whether its the return of metal-Shihad on Empty Shell (complete with a Toogood coughing fit to finish) or the pneumatic punkpop of Big Future.

Elsewhere, the Shihad penchant for dislocating rhythms helps make the likes of Day Will Come and first single Alive an off-kilter thrill. And the album's bravest move - bookending the 12 songs with two quiet thoughtful ballads - the suicide lament of None of the Above and finale Guts and the Glory - gives what's between them its own redemptive and optimistic spirit.

Live, Shihad were always Shihad even when it did put out a live album under the Pacifier brand. Now they've figured out what that means in the studio, all over again.

Label: WEA