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Captains Of The Citadel - How To Dismantle Yourself
Released: 1 Oct 2008
Genre: Rock
Style: Grunge
Arctic Top Track: Tara
Arctic Rating: 
Review by: Rich Pickings - 18th February 2009
The church of modern day indie is a broad one, where it's perfectly acceptable for Korg toting flouro wastrels to unleash bleep-gasmic post rave, before the DJ next spins another one by a bunch of lairy bomber jacketed proles shouting about birds, beer and bother.
Captains of The Citadel - South Londoners Adam Ross Hunt, Derek Williamson, Timothy Hunt and Thomas Herbert - have chosen a path less well trodden, fusing elements of grunge with that great, vitriolic stab of punk energy which thankfully the Americans never quite got. True it's a vein which Nine Black Alps were mining to a significant amount of apathy from the record buying public, but How To Dismantle Yourself has a welcome degree of subtlety, displaying grey matter as much as sinew.
What could be derivative Trees/Chains/Jam plagiarism is something therefore more rewarding, as whilst the quiet-loud songwriting chassis is as comfortably familiar as a weekend sweatshirt, the four piece are less than content to be post-emo wannabes. This is music to stare up into the night sky and scream along to, especially on the anthemic Tara, which bristles with a better-loud chorus and good old fashioned guitars piled on guitars. The title track has less pile driving edge, but retains an authentic sense of check-shirted grit in it's margins and retains a menacing air of despairing, controlled aggression. Hunt's words are frequently torn between life affirmation and pathos soaked world watching, and the closer Water is more introverted, sounding a little unplugged in the tentative opening verses before chopping it's way to a skinny rawk crescendo. Only on Urban Rules does it all go a bit Stone Temple Pilots.
Named after a faceless Shakespearean plot device, Captains of the Citadel may find their way blocked by ghosts, but having exhumed the body, the next task is to breathe some life into it.
How To Dismantle Yourself is available to download free from www.captainsofthecitadel.com
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