I Am Giant have been making quite the name for themselves. The London four-piece have played with Slash, featured the legendary Tony Hawk and Kelly Slater in their videos, made appearances at the Viper Room and have amassed a huge fan base in the process. They’ve extensively toured over in Australia and New Zealand. And they haven’t even released a debut album in their own country yet. The Horrifying Truth comes out on the 8th October in the UK and proves itself to be worthy of that hype the band have been generating.
If there’s any word that can describe this album, it’s big. Opening track and lead single, “Purple Heart”, is defining proof of that. A massive chorus, enormous hooks and some powerful vocals make it a track to be reckoned with and the stuff that’ll fill stadiums. “The Escape Artist” and “Electric Throne” manage the same thing, but instead play on some clever lyrics and some Lostprophets style instrumental sections. Although not as hard hitting as Lostprophets can be, I Am Giant have managed to construct an album full of huge, radio-friendly tunes that will catapult them higher than they might have imagined.
In some respects, this is great. Tracks like “Living The Crash” and “Neon Sunrise” are lots of fun, very singable and instantly captivating. The latter has the best opening riff on the whole album and Ed Martin’s falsetto creeps into the chorus nicely. Lyrically, the album riffs off of themes of mortality and growing up and moving on, but in a mature and engaging way. If The Horrifying Truth is laden with radio hits, then this is surely a plus point – thought provoking and meaningful songs win out over fickle love songs any day. However, in other respects, it means that the album lacks some variety. The problem with aiming for big hits is that it means sticking to a tried and tested formula. That’s not to say that there’s no experimentation at all, and on a select couple of tracks, I Am Giant shine as songwriters. “Nightvision” is truly beautiful, as is “Black Hole Of My Heart”. Both tracks are slower, with some great atmospheric effects echoing through, and spectacular drumming from Shelton Woolright keeps them grounded. But then again, there’s also some fairly pointless instrumental tracks dotted about towards the latter half of the album that don’t really achieve much apart from losing the momentum that they’ve managed to gain already.
On the whole though, I Am Giant have created an epic. Already winning the hearts of fans worldwide, let’s see them conquer the UK next week.
4 out of 5 high fives!