If you want to be a primarily instrumental band, and still create controversy, then perhaps the best way to do it is to insert the word "fuck" somewhere in either your band's name or the name of one of your albums. It's cheap, it's easy, and it gives you that edgy indie cred that only not having your album stocked in major family-friendly department stores can give you.

Not that the minimally-titled "LP" would be likely to be stocked in major family-friendly department stores, even if the band's name was different. The Kraftwerk-inspired retro electronica here probably would not sit well amongst the discounted Shania Twain and Maroon 5 albums in your average department store music section, and this release isn't exactly calibrated towards meeting sales targets in important consumer demographics. Unless "people who like old-school keyboard electronica" have become a major force while I wasn't looking.

Most of the songs on this album were constructed while the band was on tour, with the band playing the songs unrehearsed on stage before retiring to a studio environment to capture the music that they'd just made. For this reason, the songs here have a frenetic, live-in-the-studio feel to them, they haven't gone stale from being endlessly tweaked and adjusted in the lead-up to the recording sessions. This is perhaps the band's biggest asset, and the music sounds fresh and exciting, in the vein of similar bands like !!! and Lightning Bolt.

With that said, there are limits to just how pure frantic energy can take you. Most of the music on this album is based around old-style Casio keyboards churning out a decidedly cheesy array of sounds, with a bass line and percussion added in afterwards. The result is something like a mixture between Kraftwerk and Lightning Bolt, with the tracks here being fast-paced electro with occasional bursts of unintelligible vocals shouted over the top of it. The problem is that every track has more or less the same tempo, and more or less the same construction. There is no progression whatsoever on the album, each track is simply a few minutes of the same tune repeating over and over again, with some minor variations in the percussion.

There are a couple of moments when things do get a little different, which really stick out owing to the repetitive nature of this music, unfortunately highlighting things such as the tinny 8-bit nintendocore introduction of Safari may not have been the greatest idea the band have ever had. The band wisely decide to cut things short after just thirty-seven minutes, and it's worrying for the band's future prospects that by the time this rolls around, the whole sound has already been beaten to death. I understand that Holy Fuck aren't exactly a band that can get out the acoustic guitars and add a ballad to the album to change the pace a little, but a few changes of tempo and theme would not have gone amiss. Additionally, five of these songs are just recycled from the band's limited edition self-titled EP, so if you already have that then the additional four tracks might not quite be enough to sell this album to you.

Despite that, "LP" does quite well for a band that consciously has eschewed melody, song structure, and lyrical meaning in favour of pure energy and enthusiasm. While the limitations that the band have imposed upon themselves keep the focus of the music quite narrow, the band do what they do pretty well, and this album has all the energy that I expect that the band would have live.