Year: 2025
Label: Zoharum
This is one of the tricky situations when you’re a reviewer. A live album by a band you’ve never heard before. Live albums quite rarely open up themselves for the newcomer, or are fully representative of how the act sounds like. The sound is wont to leave something to be desired, and so on. How is one to write an accurate review in such a situation?
Luckily, in this day and age, a lot of music is available just a few clicks away. So I headed over to my streaming platform of choice, and listened to The Holy Family’s studio material. Considering all the tracks from this live album are culled from their eponymous debut, I focused on that album in particular.
But, first up, I have to commend the production values of Live Burning, Burning Live. It sounds just as good as a studio recording. The sound is clear and balanced, the band is in fine form. This truly is one of those rare occasions where one can get a good idea of the music based on a live album.
So if you’re a fan of The Holy Family, you can stop reading here. This live album is worth your money. The rest of y’all keep on reading.
The promo sheet dubs The Holy Family occult rock. I beg to differ. This is not occult rock in the sense of old classics a’la Black Widow, or more modern purveyors like The Devil’s Blood. Nah, this is some kind of psychedelic, progressive rock music with elements ranging from krautrock to prog folk. I’d even throw in jazz as a passing reference.
I’d use adjectives like trippy and hazy to describe the music. I don’t know how much actual jamming the band do on stage, but there are plenty of sections here that sound organic in that way. And trippy. At any rate, the renditions are greatly different from their studio versions, with running times differing usually minutes in either direction. Many of the live tracks are shorter, some are longer.
There’s not many memorable melodies either in the instrumentation or vocals here. Instead, what The Holy Family will snare the listener in with, if they snare them in, is the mood. Again: trippy. Adventurous, in a hippy jazz kind of way. Organs and keys weave hazy patterns, over which guitars lay down their psychedelic, progressive ramblings. The vocals are in no way at the fore, instead being more an instrument among the rest. The lyrics are pretty hard to make out.
Yes, it’s the mood above else that’s the draw here. Because, frankly, I’m not too hot about the compositions. Like I said, rare are the memorable hooks. These are songs that even after about a dozen spins I can’t really tell from each other. I wouldn’t call them boring or bland exactly… nondescript is the word I’m looking for. As compositions, these do little for me. But I do recognize there is some great instrumentation and interplay between instruments here.
And, at the risk of sounding like a broken record: the mood. Of realities bending, or linearity losing all meaning, of time and distance warping, of shapes becoming colours and sound sensation. This is what The Holy Family nail on Live Burning, Burning Live.
As you can surmise, I’m somewhat in two minds about the album. What I like stands pitted against some rather glaring things I’m less enthusiastic about. And, I have to admit, it’s maybe a bit less than 50/50 on the side of good. The compositions are just too intangible, too nondescript, too ethereal for me.
I don’t know if I managed to describe The Holy Family’s music in an appropriate manner. I guess this is the takeaway for readers: Live Burning, Burning Live is a great sounding live album of trippy, ethereal, psychedelic, progressive rock. Haziness comes at the expense of memorable compositions, but boosts the mood. If that sounds like enough for you, dear reader, then by all means: check this out, even if I’m not totally convinced.
Only Death Is Real 