Witch House
2011
To say YLHCSD enjoy the work of Crystal Castles would be an understatement; they are perhaps the most brazen ripoff band to have formed since Coldplay first snagged themselves a copy of The Bends. But while Chris Martin & co. had time to flesh out their sound into a chart-topping brand of dad-rock barbiturate, this would be YLHCSD’s one and only LP.
As the cover suggests, their distorted synths, chopped and screwed 8-bit samples, incoherently screamed vocals and goth dancefloor chic is louder and nastier than CC’s. Unfortunately, their need to compensate for their off-brand status by turning everything to 11 often causes hooks to be lost in favour of sheer dissonance. While there are some genuinely powerful, hard-hitting cuts here ('Blinded', 'Leap of Desire I'), vast swathes of the album are marred by a dubstep-heavy production that hasn’t aged well at all.
