I honestly thought after hearing nothing from Drunk Gods since their single Found the Lord & Lost My Soul/Pet Hate, back in 2018, that Ewan was on an indefinite hiatus, maybe he had found “the lord” and lost the music mojo? Thankfully this is not the case, with Ewan taking to social media at the turn of the year announcing the imminent return of Drunk Gods, this return now cemented with the release of The Immortality Project, the follow up to 2015’s self titled debut, and album title perhaps a wry observation and a hint that you can’t keep a good man down.
I’m delighted to report, perhaps delighted isn’t the right word for music as thought provokingly unsettling as Ewan’s, just take the latest single from the album, A Dead Man Lives Here as a case in point, haunting and disconcerting, with its distorted soundtrack, so maybe I’ll say I’m captivatingly enchanted to report, The Immortality Project is a triumphant return after such a long time away.
The album bears all the hallmarks of Ewan’s often industrial strength disquieting provocative post punk roots and influences, while also displaying an element of progression in his sound. The album is well produced, it feels more polished, but not overly so, there is nothing that detrimental to the music which maintains its soul, sometimes a dark and troublesome soul granted, and it’s intenseness and integrity throughout, switching between ominous and threatening at times, to the sonorous and soaring, like the emotionally uplifting Stupid Human which to me sounds like it has an element of a Stuart Adamson influence to the guitar playing. There is always an element of darkness casting a shadow throughout though, take the tongue in cheek black humour of the tumultuous Positive Song “I was happy, then I was born…”
The album opens in style with a spaghetti western intro to the first single form the album, I Want to Feel Your Pain before it opens up into a hugely expansive sweeping tour de force, while Killing Joke would be covetous of songs like the politically charged The British Museum with its heavily impenetrable riffing. Elsewhere Ill Will fizzes with a certain electrically charged simmering volatility ready to ignite at any time with its fiery incandescence. The moody chorus of The Noise feels ready to explode at any time, a volatile build up of pressure, surrounded by booming and frenetically charged melodies and tense lyrics before the album closes in eerily sinister goth-punk style with a near whispered vocal break on The Milk of Human Kindness Song.
Glad to have Drunk Gods back to both unsettle and provoke thought but also take in and revel in the intense majesty of the music.