Those with even the smallest appreciation of art will recognize the title as taken from a famous painting by J.M.W. Turner, the personification of steam power hurtling through the rain-soaked countryside. Here, Hellkern Warriors capture the same idea in music rather than paint.
But their journey is a very different one, their acid rain falling on a neon-soaked, nighttime city, steam rising from the streets and decaying industrial urbanscapes, and from their own machine as they speed through its dark heart: a new backdrop but the same story for a modern, or perhaps future, age.
No less romantic than the original image, but now a complex web of digital deftness and growling guitars, one full of anticipation and atmosphere, momentum and melody, the story taken out of the windswept English countryside and retold in the cyberpunk settings of a Blade Runner-esque world.
Like all the best music, it finds sonic inspiration everywhere, from cool gothic soundscapes to the power of alt-rock, in electronic swathes and in the operatic underworld; it looks to the old-school analog world as much as the digital one.
And as this all comes together, the overall feeling is one of power, of relentless energy, the song driving forward just as their vehicle does on a collision course with destiny.
Music, at its best, paints pictures; “Rain, Steam and Speed” does much more than that; it picks the listener up and carries them along, whether they want to go or not.
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