High Vis
Guided Tour
Dais
Oct 31, 2024 Web Exclusive
The ascension of High Vis has been slow burning, yet fiercely gathering momentum over the past 18 months, mainly since their second album, Blending, dropped in 2022. Molding together elements of post-punk, noise, shoegaze, and rabble-rousing choruses sat somewhere between the terrace Oi! of Cockney Rejects and the anthemic Britpop of Oasis, High Vis are an unconventional yet insatiable quandary.
So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that high hopes have been leveled on their third long player, Guided Tour. What’s more, it doesn’t disappoint and throws more ideas and influences into the mix than both its predecessors.
Initially formed in 2016 from the ashes of numerous hardcore punk bands, High Vis have adopted a mix and match approach from the outset where anything goes if it fits. And it’s this anti-formula formula that continues to pay dividends. Across the 11 tracks that make up Guided Tour, there’s nods to John McGeoch-era Banshees (“Gone Forever”), Eagulls (“Drop Me Out”), ’90s rave (“Mind’s a Lie”), and Killing Joke (“Farringdon”), among others. It’s all married together by Graham Sayle’s distinctive voice, that’s both filled with anger yet controlled in equal measures.
On the album’s title track, Sayle sings “You be the light, I’ll be your guide” over jangling guitars that could be from a Go-Betweens outtake. While the pent-up fury of “Mob DLA” takes High Vis to places not visited since the likes of Agent Blue and Kinesis were kicking up a stink in provincial Great Britain some 20 years ago.
Essential listening then, and with High Vis acting as your discerning tour guides what can possibly go wrong? (www.highvisuk.com)
Author rating: 8/10
Average reader rating: 5/10
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