Album Review: The Red Paintings - The Revolution Is Never Coming

It's hard to believe it's the first album from local progressive fiends The Red Paintings. The striking imagery and tour garb of past years left such a searing impression that it seems almost odd The Revolution Is Never Coming debuts only now. An album very much by the people and for the people, it was funded mostly by fans and predominantly recorded and produced by lead orator Trash McSweeney. Besides that, whatever heaven and hell McSweeney had to visit in order to expunge these rending, cinematic songs that careen between expansive space opera and starkly grim industrial wasteland is a sacrifice that doesn't go unappreciated.

McSweeney's grief is palpable throughout, but it's always cutting nonetheless. Despite the gushing symphonic sweeps and restrained piano tinkles, opener Vampires Are Chasing Me signifies a desperate journey ahead if his drawl is anything to go by. He ups the Maynard/Tool factor in the twin songs Dead Children and Dead Adults, which both embody that sometimes formless chaos of old with buzzing guitars and tense strings. Easps and Fall Of Rome underline the alt-rock/industrial vibe, and the creepy Streets, with its through-the-looking-glass narrative, follows suit, but there's trilling strings, choral backing and the odd embellished guitar wail splashed here and there. It's an absorbing and disturbing tapestry laced through these 13 tracks and it's difficult not to be mesmerised by its scale.

It's almost inconsequential whatever is said about TRINC: McSweeney has a multitude of messages to relay and fulfils his mission in displaying the full gamut of human flaws and sins, all presented here in sonically sublime, reckless and reigning chaos.