"My initial thought of an angel was the cute kind of cherub, but traditionally angels aren't cute or comforting figures,” says Jon Courtney. “They’re often overwhelming, terrifying beings.”
It’s a dramatic, awe-inspiring vision for Pure Reason Revolution’s new album, Terrifying Angels.
Following the somewhat gentler, moving themes of sorrow and transience guiding 2024’s Coming up to Consciousness, the new sound is dark and potent, full of savage riffs, ominous soundscapes, and thrashing, grungy layers – melded, of course, with the band’s signature transcendent harmonies.
“The last record was more chill, so it just felt terribly natural to do something grittier, heavier and more aggressive,” Courtney explains.
He’s PRR’s lead writer, but he’s by no means the only creative contributor to Terrifying Angels. The album features collaborations with old friends and new partners alike. The eponymous song was born out of a jam session in Portland, Oregon, with founding bandmate Greg Jong, who also co-wrote “Rumination Ruin”. Meanwhile “Haywire Heart” and “Hold Your Wrath” – respectively the shortest and longest tracks in PRR’s discography – were both written alongside Paul Mullen, the alt-rock legend who fronted Losers and Yourcodenameis:milo. Finally, “Below Radiance” grew out of a section from a composition by Courtney’s mentee Kenny Fitzgerald.
“I'm increasingly becoming open to collaborations,” Courtney says. “I used to spend a lot more time in the studio by myself, in pursuit of perfection, but now I'm more in search of what's fun, what's rewarding. Rather than blood sweat and tears, I really enjoy working with other people, bouncing ideas, and having their fresh perspective.”
The album was largely recorded by Courtney, with Annicke Shireen contributing her incredible vocal talent to a PRR record for the second time, in a five-day studio session in Berlin.
“It’s a pretty intense job and we made long days,” says the singer, also known for her solo work, Shireen, and as part of Heilung. “I was heavily on meds because of a throat infection, so I’m really happy how it turned out. It's always inspiring to do these days, and to creatively spar with Jon.”
Ravi Kesavaram, acclaimed drummer of My Vitriol, also returned for his second PRR album, laying down his parts remotely in his attic.
Rounding out the list of important collaborators on the album are Mariusz Duda (Lunatic Soul) and Kristoffer Gildenlöw, who both contribute bass to the record, while Bruce Soord (The Pineapple Thief) once again takes care of the mix.
As for the terrifying angels themselves, Courtney explains that the initial inspiration came from a sermon he heard at an Easter service in Berlin, an experience that sparked the work’s spiritual dimension.
The album’s lyrics explore angels as an idea that combines both salvation and destruction – symbolising situations, feelings and relationships that produce both transcendence and suffering simultaneously. A terrifying angel is an inversion of expectations: something we assume would be purely good having an unexpectedly darker side that can’t be separated from the light.
Love, memory, truth, and identity all become their own kinds of terrifying angel over the LP’s seven varied tracks. Such huge, epochal themes and spectacular imagery are the perfect complement to the heavy grandeur of the music, with classic grunge like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Mudhoney mentioned as influences.
According to Shireen: “The lyrics are complex and there are many ways to interpret them, because there’s a lot of symbolic meaning. Parts really resonated with me – the world is built on a system which is rotten to the core but still holds up a facade of shininess.”
Courtney’s final word: “Terrifying Angels is about encountering forces that appear redemptive and discovering that transformation is never gentle. The album follows a narrator who repeatedly mistakes salvation for safety, only to learn that the forces that save us are often the same forces that undo us. Ultimately, he must reach a deeper understanding by accepting complexity."
