Album Review: Priors – New Pleasure

Montreal’s Priors released their latest full length, New Pleasure, via Slovenly Records earlier this month, the album follows up on last years self titled album and contains an intoxicating mix, one that is underpinned by a love of the dark and stormy side of rock ‘n roll. The first part of Life opens up New Pleasure with a dark new wave instrumental, any thought that this is an indication of the direction of the album is swiftly dismissed when you’re hit with Got In Me, a track that brings an immediate contrast with two minutes of savage garage punk. New Pleasure continues to mutate and morph into new forms, adopting dark psychedelic flourishes, frantic punk rhythms and jarring post punk, rather than colliding these styles seem to melt into each other to create an album that defies categorisation.

Each of the fourteen songs on New Pleasure seem to tilt the balance of eclectic influences to ensure that each track stands apart from the one preceding it, but at the same time managing to sound seamless. It’s should come as no surprise that Priors include members of Sonic Avenues in their line up as they carry the snotty garage energy of that band. New Pleasure is an album that lives up to it’s title, but they also emulate and recycle some old pleasures as the album embraces elements from the early recordings by The Horrors, Buzzcocks, The Hives, Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Two Tens and The Marked Men. Priors have released a refreshing and original album that breathes some new life into the garage scene, but they also simultaneously remain strangely familiar.

New Pleasure is an album of complimentary contradictions that on paper shouldn’t work, but as no one bothered to tell Priors this the result is an impressive album, one that should appeal to any fan of the bands that came out of, and that were inspired by, the bands from the 60s garage punk scene. New Pleasure can be purchased on digital and vinyl formats, including an extremely limited edition coloured vinyl variant, via Slovenly Records here