For most of their history, Holy Fuck have operated as the augmented duo of Brian Borcherdt and Graham Walsh, surrounding themselves with a rotating cast of bass players and drummers (sometimes more than one at a time). Over the last few years, though, a consistent lineup has solidified, with bassist Matt McQuaid and drummer Matt Schulz holding down the rhythm section. And as one might expect, the consistency has affected the band's sound, making Latin, the band's third album, leaner and funkier than its predecessors.
Borcherdt and Walsh have refined some of their more aggressive noise, and here they use their arsenal of tone generators, guitars, and keyboards to create washes of tone that wrap around the rhythm section like a scratchy blanket. The occasional stab of melody flashes out from the maelstrom, before following the band on its next rhythmic turn. In fact, the album opens with a long ambient wash that builds in volume and intensity before peeling back to reveal the skeletal dance groove of "Red Lights", a highlight that makes the most of the strange interplay between untethered ambient sound and insistent rhythm.
Even in its new, tighter state, the band can still bring the noise, as on the crunching closer "P.I.G.S.", whose melodic synth patterns culminate in a vicious stop-time coda that ends the album on its roughest, most brutal note. Holy Fuck's original mission was essentially to use a live band to create electronic, techno-informed music, and it's a goal they remain wedded to here. Single "Latin America" in particular seems to pattern its rhythmic breakdowns and buildups on modern dance music.
Holy Fuck have carved out a unique and identifiable sound of their own, and as the band itself has solidified, it's made their identity even stronger. If the record loses some of the sense that things could fall apart at any moment-- part what made their sound so gripping-- they largely compensate with solid compositions and strong instrumental interplay.
