There Is No Year

If Fisher and co feel wrung out at times it’s not through lack of commitment or creativity. No one said fighting the good fight would be easy and There Is No Year lands enough punches to win at least a TKO decision.

The poem isn’t great, but the music is as electrifying, unpredictable and chaotic as ever.

The mood change from insurrection to brooding dystopia makes for a less immediate set of songs, but listen long enough and this is another powerful, affecting set. [Mar 2020, p.114]

Frequently thrilling and never boring, There Is No Year reveals subtleties amidst the powerful energy with each play, and in so doing shines a light on Algiers, a band who stride defiantly forth, urgent counterpoints vital for facing down the injustices of our times.

These tight, explosive songs combine a refined poetic lyric approach in songwriting and arranging that's every bit as urgent as the album's two predecessors, yet it's so emotionally charged, it leaves the listener breathless and exhausted, as well as compelled and excited.

Their fusion of Franklin James Fisher's gospel howl and post-industrial beats has grown into something searing and infernal. [Feb 2020, p.90]

The band continue to be radical, but rather than being reactionary, ‘There is No Year’ is precise, thoughtful and powerful.

Algiers really fucking mean every note, and their radical politics soak through each track like petrol through a rag. If they overdo it from time to time, so be it – how nice it is to hear a band giving a little too much of a fuck, rather than not enough.

Sitting right at the cross-section between optimism and pessimism, There Is No Year is an enlivening experience, and a mostly successful artistic rendering of a world on fire.

Their third album can be a blast. [Jan 2020, p.84]

Mostly fine results. [Feb 2020, p.25]

When There Is No Year abandons the synthwave influences and embraces Fisher’s clear admiration for Foucault and other critical theorists, it’s easy to remember Algiers’ unique appeal.

There Is No Year is a mixed bag of disparate musical styles, played out as an intelligently composed accompaniment for Fisher’s complex political rhetoric. [Mar 2020, p.58]

Algiers’ audio zines, the last of which invoked the Algerian revolution to explore angst and uncertainty using thickets of drone, show that they are capable of more nuanced writing. But they haven’t yet learned to translate the political into the personal, to turn abstract ideas into matters of the gut.

The album blossoms when his delivery matches the tone of the music.

If it's a call to arms then it fails to churn the necessary emotional juices to deliver it. What we do have, however, is a serviceable space for venting our contemporary anxieties, which in and of itself can be a healing experience. Ultimately, if you're struggling with the political realities of the day, Algiers are in it together with you, and that alone will be enough for some.

A tense, polished, cold affair that never truly explodes into something larger.