Hartheim @ Soup Kitchen, Manchester, 8 April

Live Review by Gary Kaill | 14 Apr 2015

Hartheim are awash with contradiction. Defined as much by what they are not as by what they are, every note, every grievous lyric ("Your god has so much to answer for..."), and every jitter and twitch of Mike Emerson's Saint Vitus’ dance, seem designed to affront. Bar guitarist Gaz Devreede's blacker-than-black get-up, any casual observer would clock the jeans and T-shirts and lump them in with the indie mainstream. But the Manchester five-piece are anything but; the set-up is orthodox (vocals, guitar, bass, drums, keys) while the execution certainly isn't. Devreede's chiming arpeggios and Nick Townley's Korg fills give their arrangements a brooding elegance.   

Tonally, they shift from solemn to raging to rhapsodic. The sound tonight is colossal but Hartheim have no anthems – a sliver of sinister, ever present, ensures as much. Even at their most relatable (the unflinching examination of break-up that is When Did Your Last Rose Die?), there is little in the way of succour. Hartheim's mirror on the world is bleak and unrelenting.

For this debut headline performance, they breathe fire like never before. Local poet Lauren Bolger joins them for a blazing spoken-word intro. Electro duo Akranes lift and expand Duality, a song whose multi-hook, stop-start dynamic is, for now, a new high. You fear for Emerson, who commits to Father, the Son so deeply you wonder if he'll ever make it back. But this is a performance fraught with danger, and it confirms the arrival of a new and unique voice; a voice that says: we're ready. A voice that asks: are you? [Gary Kaill]

http://soundcloud.com/hartheim