Album Review: Eleventh He Reaches London - Bānhūs

Bānhūs is the perfect title for Eleventh He Reaches London's long-awaited third album. Translating from Old English to “bone-house”, it's dark, mysterious and takes a while to wrap your head around. This album of seven droning, knife-edge tracks doesn't let up; morbid, curious and ever-present, it's a pretty strong statement from the Perth band.

Calling EHRL's previous records “high concept” might be a bit of a cop-out, but it's pretty hard to argue against the vast themes and environments the five-piece build into everything they do – one of the reasons there are such big gaps between albums. It's a matter of perfection, and you can immediately tell how much effort they've put into each track. Where 2009's Hollow Be Thy Name upped the dark elegy stakes, Bānhūs sees a lot more technicality and space. Openers The Dragging Cloud and Code Entwined kick things off with noisy dirges, before the Nick Cave-ish Body Unbind lets in some air with a slight country twang over a driving beat. Deep harmony ebbs through both No Funeral and Veil, with banjo effectively leading the latter from the start. Glass Harmonium and To Whomever excel in delivering punches of warped sound between muted lines of shadowy dialogue.

It's pretty hard to top EHRL's effort here, the one major problem being its inaccessibility to those who aren't already fans. The band's style is, well, different, especially in the Perth musical climate. But it's a tradeoff: what EHRL do, they do well, and Bānhūs is yet another example of that.