It's always ace when the demo of a band whose live show you love captures the atmosphere and impact of said live show, and on their second demo The Resistance manage that tricky feat perfectly. Live they're a full-on-yet-haunting electro onslaught, making with feedback, guitar, the odd bit of sampled vocal, drum machine and a fair few effects pedals a noise which has the kind of resonance most bands struggle to attain with a chorus... and this demo maintains both the instant impact and the lasting evocative quality. Which is pretty good going, really.
Switching from stirring beats and distortion to a kind of poignant magnificence, The Resistance have a sense of inevitable, organically raw forward drive. There's a hint of the militia in their seamless coherence and unity: they don't leave any gaps in their image, and they utilise the same casual precision in making rock'n'roll seem exciting again by deconstructing it, throwing away most of the parts and then filling in the gaps with technology which is counter-intuitively stirring.
Listening to them is frankly a revelation, and if you've yet to hear them I urge you to do so now - it's possibly the best chance you have of finding something to be excited about during 2006.

Holliy Davies