The Guilty Hands

I hear guilty hands and immediately think of fidgeting, drumming of finger tips or maybe someone has got bored and drawn a guilty looking smiley on their hands. This imagery certainly didn't give me an expectation of the band.

If you are bored of routine music, an album where tracks could easily be confused for each other, or just want to experience something new? Definitely listen to Guilty Hands.

This is an album where no track is the same, and because of this it is hard to pigeon hole this group as every track could be classed as one, two or even three genres.

The Guilty Hands album - Desire on a Short Leash, is good news to music fans who might be wrestling with the question is rock dead? A question that was posed by a Guardian Journalist last week, which made rock fans, DJs such as, Zane Lowe and You Me at Sixer, Josh Franceshi take to social networking site Twitter, to scratch their heads and respond to this question, "rock is dead??" (Zane Lowe) and "Rock is dead...better find a new job then" (Josh YMAS). The Guilty Hands are not only resuscitating the bland indie-rock genre but modifying it.

The band were able to record this album with help from independent reviewers who voted for them to win a competition on slicethepie.com, they beat hundreds of other acts and were given £15,000 to record the album, Desire on a Short Leash.

This album is so eclectic, that there is almost a schizophrenic feel to it at times, with every track being completely different and slightly more twisted than the last, you're gripped.

They proudly do not conform to the indie genre stereotypical conventions and have proven this in their debut album.

Straying away from ordinary song themes lost love etc. The Guilty hands have written songs about people strolling through graveyards, deals with the devil, drowning and many more macabre themes. Despite these themes, the album will not leave you depressed but intrigued as to how they ever came to bring these ideas to life.

In the opening track of Desire on a Short Leash, 'Razor', you are met with the sound of scissors cutting, a sound clip on a loop before kicking into the song heavily led by guitar before trailing into an electro sound. This is one of the best tracks on the album, the hooks are sure to be spinning around your head for days . This is a song about identity, that as dark as it might first appear is actually about rebels shaving their hair in a bid to be an anti-conformist and find who they really are.

One of the stand out tracks on the album is 'Guilty Hands' , a song that kicks in sounding like a soup of Lola Ray, Temper Trap and Placebo (which is no bad thing!). With highly descriptive lyrics, and the pace constantly building, shooting into a faster beat, this song is the most energetic on the album. The technique of masking a song with an upbeat bed of music is interesting because you might fail to notice that this song is slightly masochistic, a song about someone wanting their masseur to give them more pain.

'Up On the Hill (No.42)' , has already found success, probably the one of the most eerie tracks on the album and again another memorable one. The song that is about a suspected child abuser setting himself alight, is being used on NCIS advert. Despite the disturbing theme of the song it is quite a powerful track, with the most repititive hooks of all the album.

The continual change in direction and pace of the album keeps you as the listener on your toes and thoroughly entertained.

This should be a mess but it isn't.

Aspects of these songs sound like: Muse, Placebo, Lola Ray, Hoosiers, H*I*M , AFI, Kasabian, Mighty Boosh, AFI, Nightmare of You, Temper Trap, Futureheads, Band of Horses, Avalanches, Louis XIV.