Britain’s The Horrors are back with a new album, Primary Colours, a long awaited follow up to their heralded debut Strange House. Primary Colours was recorded last summer with Portishead’s Geoff Barrow which seems to be paying off extremely in the epic sound department. The Horrors combine a rough punk attitude with a darker post punk rain storm of style. Primary Colours has them going into the heart of the storm coming out with a stadium sized wall of sound behind them. The album opens with a trance like stream of light buoyed sounds before the bass line rolls in…then the drums explode and the journey begins for “Mirror’s Edge”. Then “Three Decades” bursts with energy and sweeping tremolo guitars. The rest of Primary Colours follows suit with big sounds and tough vocals that remind me one instant of The Clash, Interpol the next, Longwave the next, and Glasvegas the next. The highlight comes on the last track (though I am a fan of “Scarlet Fields” – perhaps a pun on “Strawberry Fields” like their previous album had the track “Sheena Is A Parasite”) and first single from the album “Sea Within A Sea”. Clocking in at over 7 minutes this song is filled with and motor of a beat and lovely scratchy guitars that don’t even sound like guitars. Once the synths come in halfway through the track along with Faris Badwan’s slightly delayed and extremely reverbed vocals I was sucked in completely.

mp3: The Horrors – Sea Within A Sea

mp3: The Horrors – Scarlet Fields

Primary Colours is out on May 5th via XL and you can stream it on XL’s site right now.