Haunted Youth

Manchester's The Underground Youth's penchant for dark, brooding, cavernous rock is fully displayed on new album Haunted (out through Fuzz Club Records next week). There is a Gothic post-punk swoon to 'Collapsing Into Night', feeling pitched headlong into the shadows of 80s monochrome despair. This bleeds into a more plaintive title track, a faster disco beat augmenting the shift in tone (or variant thereof), before the wall of fuzz cascades on 'Dreaming Of Maya Deren'. The album continues to lurk in these black-and-white realms, but it's the spaces in between that holds the hypnotism - the quiet hiss and throb that opens 'Drown In Me' or 'Slave''s fizzing electric surges, the operatic fade in on tracks like 'The Girl Behind'. It is a melodramatic mantra, melodies that mesmerise. Haunted indeed.