ALBUM REVIEW - RED SUN REVIVAL — COUNTING DOWN THE HOURS
WORDS RICK E
RED SUN REVIVAL
COUNTING DOWN THE HOURS
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There are gaps between albums, and then there are gaps long enough for an entire scene to rearrange itself around you. When Red Sun Revival released Identities in the summer of 2015, they were one of the brightest hopes on the UK gothic rock circuit, a London band with a violinist in the ranks, a growing European following and the sense that the best was still to come. Their own biography later spoke of a third full-length pencilled in for early 2018. That date came and went, and so did a great many more, until the question among the faithful quietly shifted from when it might arrive to whether it ever would. Now, eleven years after its predecessor, it is finally here, and it would be hard to imagine a more fitting title. Counting Down The Hours is a record about time, about what it takes from us and what we squander, and it arrives from a band who know better than most exactly how long the wait can feel.
Red Sun Revival formed in London in 2011 around singer, guitarist and principal songwriter Rob Leydon, who had written the songs for the band's debut between 2007 and 2010. From the outset the band set themselves apart from the black-clad pack by placing violin at the very centre of the sound, Christina Emery's strings riding high over guitar and bass, with a cinematic sweep that owed as much to film scores and folk music as it did to the gothic canon. Their first ever gig was at the Whitby Goth Weekend in April 2012, a baptism of fire if ever there was one, and the debut album Running From The Dawn followed that October, produced and mixed by Stephen Carey and mastered by Andy Jackson. The four-track Embers EP arrived in 2014, and Identities in June 2015, a more ambitious record whose songs were tied together by an overarching story, closing with the two-part The Condemned and The Awakening. Along the way the band released through Resurrection Records in the UK, alongside AF Music and Echozone on the continent, played festivals including Gotham Sounds in Hilden, Dark Spring in Berlin, SGM in Madrid and Lumous in Tampere, and shared stages with the likes of Diary Of Dreams, The Eden House, Gene Loves Jezebel, And Also The Trees, The Birthday Massacre and Chameleons Vox.
That pedigree makes the return all the more welcome. Counting Down The Hours and after so long in the making, the songs are left to make the argument for themselves. The tracklist alone tells you plenty about the territory: burning bridges, inquisitions, executioners, things left too late and a closing plea to be forgotten. This was never going to be a sunny comeback, and nobody who has followed Red Sun Revival would have wanted one.
Bridges Burn opens the album, and as the opening statement of their first album in eleven years it carries an almost provocative charge. It is a song about consequences, about the point beyond which there is no going back, and as an opener it sets the tone with real purpose. This is where the band's essential ingredients need to announce themselves again, Leydon's melancholic vocal, the push and pull of guitar and bass, and that violin cutting across the top, and the sense of a band picking up the threads after a long gap between records is palpable. There is a defiance to beginning a long-awaited return with a song about destruction, a refusal to simply pick up where Identities left off, and it makes for a bold first move.
The Painter shifts the focus from the grand gesture to the intimate portrait. Red Sun Revival have always been at their best when they marry the personal to the cinematic, and a title like this suggests a character study, someone trying to capture something before it fades, or perhaps someone trying to paint over what is already there. It is the kind of song where the band's love of the film soundtrack comes into its own, scene-setting and atmosphere carrying as much weight as melody, and it gives the opening stretch of the album a welcome sense of depth. Where the opener looks outward, this one draws you closer, and the contrast between the two works well.
To Weave A Banner is one of the most evocative titles on the record, and it hints at the folk influences that have always run beneath the band's sound like an underground stream. There is something almost ceremonial about the image, the slow, deliberate work of making a standard to rally behind, and it fits neatly with the album's sense of time being measured out stitch by stitch. If any track here was built for the violin to take centre stage, it is surely this one, and it represents the side of Red Sun Revival that has always made them more than just another gothic rock band. It is a reminder of how distinctive their voice was in the first place, and how much it has been missed.
Inquisition brings the darkness forward. The title conjures interrogation, judgement and the weight of accusation, and it sits squarely in the gothic tradition of power, guilt and persecution that the titles of The Condemned pairing on Identities hinted at. This is where the album should bare its teeth, and on paper it is the natural point for the rhythm section to drive harder and for the tension to tighten. Coming just before the title track, it acts as a dark threshold, the moment where the record stops looking around and starts looking inward. It is the kind of song that tends to come alive on stage, and it will be fascinating to hear how it sits alongside the older material when these songs make it onto a stage.
Counting Down The Hours sits at the heart of the record, both literally and thematically, and it carries the weight of everything around it. It is impossible to separate the title from the circumstances of the album's release; after more than a decade between albums, the image of time ticking away takes on a resonance the band can surely not have missed. Whether it is about waiting, dread or the simple awareness of time running out, it feels like the moment the whole album has been building towards, the song that gives the rest of the record its frame. Placed fifth in the running order, it acts as a hinge between the album's two halves, and its significance only grows with each listen to the surrounding tracks.
Your Own Way opens the second half on a note of release. After the intensity of the preceding pair, the title suggests letting go, the recognition that someone has to be allowed to walk their own path, even if that path leads away. It is a theme that sits very naturally in Leydon's songwriting, which has long been drawn to loss and separation, from Without You to Mistakes, in a way that feels emotionally direct rather than theatrical, and it lends the album a human scale amid the inquisitions and executioners. Every great gothic rock record needs moments that pull back from the grandeur to speak plainly, and this is one of them. Its placement is smart too, giving the listener room to breathe before the darker stretch that follows.
I Tried is the album at its most stripped of artifice, two words that carry the whole weight of regret and self-justification. There is a vulnerability in a title like that, an admission of failure that is also a plea for understanding, and it connects directly with the record's preoccupation with time lost and chances missed. It is the sort of song on which a singer lives or dies, where there is nowhere to hide behind atmosphere or arrangement, and it is precisely the kind of emotional candour that has always set the band's best work apart. In the context of an album that has been so long in coming, it is tempting to read it as something close to a confession.
The Executioner plunges the record back into shadow. If Inquisition was the trial, this is the sentence, and the pairing of the two titles across the album gives it a narrative spine that recalls the storytelling ambition of Identities. It is classic gothic subject matter, the figure who carries out judgement, the inevitability of the final act, and it ties back neatly to the ticking clock at the album's centre, the hours finally running out. This is where the band can lean fully into the drama, and it is a fitting penultimate act of darkness before the record turns towards its close. Fans of the darker corners of the band's catalogue will find plenty here to sink their teeth into.
Too Late takes the album's central theme to its logical, painful conclusion. Where the title track counted the hours, this one arrives at the moment they have run out, the realisation that whatever needed saying or doing has gone unsaid and undone. It is a stark title, and it gives the closing stretch of the album a gravity that feels entirely earned. There is also, perhaps, a knowing nod in there for those who wondered whether this record would ever see the light of day; if so, the very existence of the song is the band's answer. It sets the scene perfectly for the finale.
Forget My Name closes the album, and it is a striking way to end a record from a band whose last album came out eleven years ago. Rather than a triumphant comeback anthem, the final word is a request to be erased, a bittersweet farewell that feels in keeping with everything that has come before. It is a closer that leans into the melancholy rather than resolving it, leaving the listener with the lingering ache that the finest gothic rock always carries. It is also deeply ironic, given that the album itself is proof of how firmly the band's name has stuck in the memories of those who were waiting.
Taken as a whole, Counting Down The Hours is a record that wears its long gestation on its sleeve, and is all the stronger for it. Its ten tracks are bound together by a single, overarching preoccupation with time, from the bridges burned at the start to the plea to be forgotten at the close, and the thematic arc running through Inquisition, the title track, The Executioner and Too Late gives it the kind of cohesion that the best concept-leaning records achieve. Those hoping for a radical reinvention may find it more of a continuation than a reboot, and at ten songs it leaves you wanting a little more after such a wait. But that is a minor grumble. What matters is that the qualities that made Red Sun Revival special, the violin-led drama, the cinematic scope and the emotional directness of Leydon's songwriting, are all still here.
Eleven years is a lifetime in music, long enough for bands to form, peak and split several times over, and plenty of acts who fall silent for that long never make it back at all. Red Sun Revival have, and Counting Down The Hours is a welcome reminder of why they mattered in the first place. It is a dark, elegant and quietly affecting record from a band who have clearly made the long wait count, and it slots comfortably alongside Running From The Dawn and Identities as a worthy third chapter. For the faithful who never stopped waiting, the countdown is over. For everyone else, this is the perfect moment to find out what they have been missing.
Eleven years in the making and worth every second — a dark, elegant meditation on time from a band who never stopped mattering.
5/5
COUNTING DOWN THE HOURS — TRACKLIST
1. Bridges Burn
2. The Painter
3. To Weave A Banner
4. Inquisition
5. Counting Down The Hours
6. Your Own Way
7. I Tried
8. The Executioner
9. Too Late
10. Forget My Name
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