| records |
ROOOOAOOROOROOGH! Now I enjoy your quiet reflective music as much as the next Guardian reading soft lad with a collection of dreadful cardigans, but sometimes, well quite often actually, I am not in the mood for Palace Music, Smog, or other such weeds... I am in the mood for purely testosterone based silliness of epic proportions and, thankfully ladies and gentlemen, this album is pure. Imagine if you will that some very muscular tattooed chaps with long hair listened to Slint a lot and decided to synthesize a sort of evil hybrid of the nasty foreboding quiet loud bits on ‘Spiderland’ with some serious prog-metal - that's what this is. Fittingly it's on noise enthusiast Mike Patton's Ipecac label, home of his own Fantoma's project, which this is similar in spirit and volume to, in my opinion (although this band is infinitely more strait faced). All the right elements are there, the offbeat chugga chugga, seriously midpaced doom laden RIFFS and the shouting which will not cease. My one reservation is that it's probably no (intentional) laugh's round at Isis' house... all "MY EYES HAVE RUPTURED WITH HOORRRRRROOOOORR" possibly, although the chap's diction leaves a lot to be desired in terms of clarity (that not being the point however). Standouts for me were the slightly pacier numbers ‘From Sinking’ and ‘False Light’, the latter of which features an awesome stoner rock riff teased out after about five minutes with something that actually approaches restraint! Awesome. The tracks that feature an almost Liz Fraser’ish female vocal along side the serious carnage are also pretty storming - ‘Weight’ in particular builds to a ridiculously ace climax after about 8 minutes. The one weak track ‘Maritime’ sounds like the sort of dodgy business Sabbath went to do after Ozzy left… a dull clean guitar instrumental with bollocks keyboards all over it. All in all though it had me reaching for my studded wristbands with much glee! Ian Unpeeled (the zine that covers the John Peel shows, info from shane@unpeeled.freeserve.co.uk) |