Wouldn’t it be nice to think that a band that’s been around longer than say, six months, might be enjoying a moment?  That certainly seems to be the case for New York's Violens, who've been doing the singles-and-EP-and-relentless-gigs thing for a few years now, but with the release of their most full realized effort, the new album Amoral, and enthralling performances at the recent CMJ fest (their Friday night show was a definite highlight of our festival experience), a whole new set of eyes may be trained on Jorge, Iddo and Myles. And that’s a good thing.

While Amoral has gotten mostly unequivocal praise, there’s been a handful who’ve bemoaned Violens’ supposed lack of “focus”, the same people perhaps who’ve been frustrated in their attempts to slap a genre tag on the trio. A quick Google of the band will turn up descriptions as varied as “art rock”, “neo-psychedelic” and “synth rock”. None of which really apply, or maybe all do, and more. Violens, in the course of one forty minute set, can have garage-punk or electro-pop moments, hallucinatory meanderings and thrashing riffs, and why not?  Likewise the album has variety to spare. There's the ambling, art-rock title track, the sunny “Violent Sensation Descends”, “Trance Like Turn”, whose dreamy nature lives up to its name, and “The Dawn of Your Happiness is Rising” which conjures UK flower pop of another era. In fact, those insisting on touchstones had better look east, as more than anything these New Yorkers reveal strong Factory-era Anglophilia, from “Until It’s Unlit” to the Orange Juice-recalling to superb synth rock single “Acid Reign”, the sensational single that holds its own next to the best of Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner.

So much to groove on and get into with Amoral – at least we think so. Do you agree?  Discover Violens’ debut album, rate it and have your review published on Noisevox!