Album Review: Feeder - 'Torpedo'
‘Torpedo’ marks 30 years of Feeder, and their new album brings a certain certainty in the midst of everything else.
If you’ve ever loved vocalist Grant Nicholas, bassist Taka Hirose, and co, you won’t be misled by this album. From the opening power of six-minute epic ‘The Healing’, where Grant sings “Hands lifted high for the healing”, Feeder prove themselves a band pulling off their grandiose ambitions.
The recorded has been pieced together - Grant at his home studio in north London, Taka’s bass in Yorkshire, and studio drum sessions with Geoff Holroyde and Karl Brazil. The end collection crosses the history of the Kerrang! Hall of Famers. In Grant’s typical writing style, it’s universal, not tied to particular moments in our recent history.
There’s the momentum of their anthems, like the title track, festival hit in waiting ‘When It All Breaks Down’, and ‘Wall of Silence’. The latter is one of many references to encouraging vibes, a necessary escape from the realism of now. “If you can say something positive, good”.
It also contains some of the moodiest and grungiest vibes from Feeder in quite some time, including ‘Magpie’s riff-driven musings on “self-control”, and the influence of Depeche Mode in ‘Slow Strings’. ‘Decompress’ is heavy in the verses, but becomes an arena pleaser in the chorus, as Grant sings: “See what tomorrow has to bring, before we lose our minds”.
The band have made two million album sales in the UK, across a broad canvas of styles. Other periods of the band’s colourful history emerge elsewhere on ‘Torpedo’. ‘Hide and Seek’ is a quieter call back to their ‘Comfort In Sound’ era, talking of dream worlds, while ‘Born To Love You’ has the fuel that drove ‘Pushing The Senses’ to become an important sound of 2005, and Feeder’s live sets ever since.
‘Submission’ makes a broody grand ending, with acoustic strums and synth strings in the style of The Cure – encompassing both the positivity that underpins ‘Torpedo’, and the understanding that life sucks sometimes.
They’ve recorded a lot since 2019’s ‘Tallulah’, and toyed with a double album, but this collection fits together cohesively as one entity. It sets up the stage for Feeder to continue in the same vein, and here’s hoping it never stops.
Feeder have always been adjacent to trends, and instead putting out into the world the music in their hearts and brains. Whether they’re loud and fuzzy, or something calmer, they have littered fine rock moments throughout ‘Torpedo’.
‘Torpedo’ the album is a sum of Feeder’s history, and it’s generally uplifting, all circling back to those positive vibes. It’s encapsulated most simply in the title track, and particularly in the line “Tonight it feels like everything will be alright”. Here’s hoping.
Words by Samuel Draper
