- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
They're still true believers in the cleansing if not excoriating power of rock and roll.
-
Frontman/lyricist Lillian Berlin urges his listeners to "take to the streets," if necessary, to enforce the will of the people. It's a heady manifesto, but Habeas Corpus never gets bogged down in rhetoric.
-
Despite the catch phrases and recycled riffs, nothing about Habeas Corpus is authentic--it's all trashy punk that trivializes anything it touches--but what's fun about it is that Living Things do it all without a sense of awareness.
-
Wordman Lillian Berlin murmurs more than he declaims and prefers to share vocals with members of a shifting communal entity dubbed the “Living Things Choir,” and if that fuzzes up the lyrics, well, like most bands, Living Things are more into emotions than ideas anyway.
-
The strength of this follow-up is not the defiant antiestablishment fist-pumping (though there's plenty), but the tunes.
-
Alternative PressThe lyrics can be heavy-handed--images of greed, violence and the apocalypse dominate, with varying levels of success--but the danceable beats and grungy atmosphere make Corpus the ideal soundtrack for debauchery in the face of economic depression. [Mar 2009, p.112]
-
The end result isn't as gripping as the debut, but Berlin is still one of hard rock's more compelling politicos.