Thought you'd seen the back of them did you? No chance. Therapy? are back, they're mad as hell and out for revenge. Through a combination of record company mismanagement and subsequent disintegration, too many rock and roll excesses and then the full Spinal Tap style exploding drummers (okay Fife left to form the excellent Divers and Graham only broke his arm, but it's the same principle) it seemed for a while as though Therapy? may have reached the point of no return,

So, if Infernal Love was fat Elvis-Therapy?, bloated, dead on the toilet and then Semi-Detached flopped painfully between the ultra-commerciality of past glories like Screamager and Nowhere, and Therapy?'s in built weirdness factor, where does that leave them now with this, their come back record on newly formed Ark21 records?

All the signs were of a crisis, despite the fact that the last two albums were actually very good, if a little too familiar. Therapy? had to deliver the goods this time. Decide what they were about and just go for it.

And that's just what they've done. From the Andy Cairns' opening rant to the fade out of the last track, they sound energised and fully potent. If you've ever seen Therapy? live, particularly in their modern four piece incarnation, you'll know just how alive and goddamn happy to be there they are, and some of that boundless energy is focussed into this album making it an exhilarating listen.

Cairns sounds lunatic as he unveils an impressive array of scary voices and musically they're bursting with ideas. We're given jaunty aggro punk on opener He's Not That Kind of Girl; downbeat, drunken lamenting on God Kicks; sleazy slide guitar and insistent throbbing bass with a giant chorus on Wall of Mouths; there's even a dirty great Fu Manchu style riff in Ten Year Plan. Overall the sound is angular and energetic, harking back to the days of Nurse particularly on tracks like Hate Kill Destroy with it's spindly bass line and discordant guitars. Most notable perhaps is the albums closing track As I Pursue My Way Unharmed which is pointlessly uncredited and hidden about fifteen minutes after the previous track ends (stop this "secret" track madness. It was interesting once, but now it's just an irritant). Pieced together from various sound fragments and individual band members' recordings, it is a brooding, bass heavy epic, laden heavy with strings and quite unlike anything you've ever heard before. A definite highlight.

So Therapy? have done it. They've made the album they wanted to, and it's a winner. But you never doubted them did you?(8)

Go to www.therapyquestionmark.co.uk.

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