The Love from Above

A drum-and-guitar duo that creates as big a sound as any other band from this state, The Lepers are an orgy of dark brooding that borders on dread and despair. This is the music that should be playing in the background as Kurtz is massacred in Apocalypse Now.

Guitarist/vocalist Owen Cleasby weaves echoing, textured guitars and lost-soul vocals over Ken Brock's intricate, mathematically precise drumming. It all sounds like dark-oil-black-leather midnight-death. And when Brock goes tribal and Cleasby loses it, like on the volcanic "Beating the Bushes," it borders on fear.

Not a pop album, this is more of an experiment in ambiance and texture that compares only vaguely (only remotely) to some of Perry Farrell's more heady, drug-induced forays. Worth it for its elegant intensity.

back to   Posted Nov. 23, 2002. Copyright © 2002 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.