The Holy Soul
Sign of the Triangle
Reverberation

On their first full length album, local Inner Western blues merchants, The Holy Soul deliver eleven tracks of dirty, down and out rock while keeping their feet deep in the swampy roots they emerged from. Holy Soul drummer Owen Penglis explains that the band has advanced in their own way.

"Rather than recording onto cassette like we did for the EP, we did the album on a proper eight-track machine."

While their contemporaries are relying on computers, The Holy Soul is faithful to the recording techniques of decades past, which gives the album a soul and presence.

However, it's not only unusual recording equipment. "Our guitarist [Tim Malfroy] is actually a bee-keeper, so we used his bee-keeping shed out in the country to record it." Penglis explains. "We even used more than one microphone this time. But it's still rough, we do it all live and stand in a circle when we record it."

While others wouldn't think of recording so primitively even for their demos, this technique suits the Sydney four-piece's sound. It's rough and raw blues and country-flecked rock that punches like a thousand multi-tracked riffs and resonates deep and defines their sound.

If you need a shoulder to cry on, don't turn to Holy Soul front man Trent Marden for a rose-tinted view of the world. With gothic songs like Dead Town, Running out of Funeral Plots and This Geography is Killing Me delivered in his deep, guttural vocals, the band leans towards the glass-half-empty side of the debate. Which is a perfect match for the farmhouse style blues rhythms and slicing guitar solos that permeate every corner of Sign of the Triangle.

"Around Sydney there aren't really a lot of other bands that come from the same background as us." Says Penglis. "Sydney seems to be more into poppier kind of sounds."

The songs stand out amongst the crowd of post-modern chameleons shifting style and trying to stay relevant. The Holy Soul are ruled by no trends, yet have recorded one of the coolest records this year.