Band:	Therapy?
Album:	Crooked Timber
Style:	Alternative metal, Hard rock
Release date:	March 2009

01. The Head That Tried To Strangle Itself
02. Enjoy The Struggle
03. Clowns Galore
04. Exiles
05. Crooked Timber
06. I Told You I Was Ill
07. Somnambulist
08. Blacken The Page
09. Magic Mountain
10. Bad Excuse For Daylight

From the Northern Irish madmen Therapy? comes Crooked Timber, an album that is bound to turn some heads this year. Those primarily familiar with the band's more mainstream-friendly releases such as Troublegum and Infernal Love will be in for a bit of a surprise. The reason for this is that Crooked Timber presents an entirely different side to the band, one that has been hinted at before, but never achieved with such consistency.

Listening to this music is like rowing a boat in an acid trip. The band conjures atmospheres associated with various images but it is up to the rhythm section to propel us through them and ground us in a groove. Like the hits of the paddles and the sound of the water resulting from them, Neil Cooper's drums and Michael McKeegan's distorted bass lines are the only constant that keep Andy Cairn's tales of human quirks and appropriately quirky guitar passages from turning Crooked Timber into a bad trip. Instead, they imply direction and allow for experiencing the thought streams explored by the band. It also comes as no surprise, particularly in tracks like "Exiles", "Magic Mountain" and "Bad Excuse For Daylight", that dubstep was a major influence for the band's sound this time around. Anthemic refrains take a back seat to rhythmically challenging shreds of sludge, resulting in music that is heavy and hypnotic. Nevertheless, songs like "Clowns Galore", "Crooked Timber" and "Somnambulist" will still inspire the listener to frantically sing along with them; however, I guess if you're in a boat you do need a few of those "Row, row, row your boat" moments...

Crooked Timber is an album that inspires with its abandon for hypnotic rhythms, vivid guitar textures and hallucinatory atmospheres. It is heavy, nuanced, well balanced, memorable and as a result - a very good trip indeed.