Holy Fuck
Event Beat
SATELLITE SERVICES
It’s always fun spotting something about an artist that signals they may be a bit ahead of their time. That may not necessarily mean that they’re some epochal act whose innovations can only be appreciated in retrospect, like Chuck Berry in the ’50s—they can just have hit upon a certain sound that musical trends of later eras will take decades to catch up with. It’s hard not to think about this when listening to Holy Fuck’s Event Beat. The Canadian band were pretty big back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, touring with M.I.A. and lending their music to hit series like Breaking Bad and Mr. Robot. Their brand of psych-tinged electronic rock always felt different to the ice-cool dance-punk coming out of New York or London’s colorful new-rave scenes. It was raw, bricolage, unpredictable, adventurous—all coursing with strange, fun ideas.
In a moment when the likes of Mandy, Indiana have put out one of the most acclaimed albums of the year thus far, following in the footsteps of projects like Model/Actriz and YHWH Nailgun last year, Holy Fuck’s brand of percussion-driven, electronically augmented art rock feels slightly more ahead-of-the-curve. The 11 tracks of Event Beat may lack the jet-black intensity of those aforementioned acts, but copious moments across the band’s sixth album display a surprisingly hard edge, like the stabbing, bass-led middle eight heard on “Ice Box,” the industrial echo sound that reverberates throughout “Czar,” and the synthetic stomp rhythm of “Diamond” that mirrors (without tipping fully into) their eerie atmospherics and visceral beats.
The record walks a fascinating tightrope, balancing these abrasive, borderline noise-rock inflections—occasionally properly hard-hitting—against more major-key and light-on-the-feet ideas. “Gold Flakes” is the most linear cut, a mellow krautrock track that rides a motorik beat into blissful oblivion. “Seven” is also extremely sun-kissed, with chill vocals and distorted keys bouncing like White Denim with a synthesizer and a couple tabs of acid. The best tracks fuse both of those polarities, like “Broken Roots,” whose processed drums and bass synths could be taken in a much heavier direction, but ultimately result in a fabulously groovy midtempo head-nodder.
Possibly Holy Fuck’s most lucid and focused album, Event Beat is pulsating and engrossing. Its synth-funk adventures threaten to tip over into something much darker and stranger, which oddly keeps you on your toes, gripped by its careful tonal balancing. Long may Holy Fuck continue to hone their craft in such intriguing, funky fashion.
