Album Review: Antlered Man – This Devil Is Them (New Heavy Sounds)

The PR blurb for London’s Antlered Man describe their new album as “dark” and “weird”. Though they might not be the most complimentary descriptors, they’re not a million miles off with that. You’d certainly have trouble boxing them up into a genre. For the sake of argument, let’s have a crack at “artsy punk/rap meets rock/sludge in an explosion of psychotic avant-garde posturing”. Yes, that’ll do.

After firing out their debut album, Giftes 1&2, last year the band wasted no time hitting the festivals and managed to squeeze in 15 last year. Fairly impressive when you consider the 100 other tour dates they managed in 2012. There’s a definite hint of the on-tour in-jokes in the theatrical writing style of this sophomore album – the song titles alone suggest that much.

They’ve definitely gone in heavier here with This Devil Is Them as the ludicrously-titled opening track, “The Ballad Of Hamhock Fullsleeve” attests. The lunatic fringe is properly out in force as something akin to Melvins meets Tool meets Tomahawk meets These Arms Are Snakes emerges like the thrashing, writhing, triple-headed, multi-tentacled behemoth it is. You try and pick which limb or mouth to focus on first out of that little lot. If the panic-stricken drum rolls and carefully-placed guitar pings don’t explode your noggin, then the gut-busting bass, twinkling chimes and unhinged vocal (which waits until well over 3 minutes to pitch in) undoubtedly will.

All too often Antlered Man ask too much of their listeners. No-one in his right mind could like the entirely dislikeable character of “Claude The Ideal Bloody Gentleman” with its dissolute, padded-out structure or the 2-minute skittish mania of “My Surname, My Cum” – a last-track “fuck you” to the listener that isn’t appreciated.

Elsewhere “GDZ” oozes along the soft buzz and fluorescent tonal mix of Torche, “Ian Will Break Again” bristles like Kongh whilst speed-rapping like Senser. “Phony Tough” settles down and flies true with a beautifully hewn groove which “Salute Da Calm” follows with an echo-laden acknowledgement to the shoegaze of Slowdive. Star of the show, however, must go to the stoned drone of “Audition Tapes For Hades” which, whilst obviously overstretching itself to reach the 10-minute mark, glows with an eerie menace as Damo Ezekiel-Holmes finds his true calling as a softly-spoken angel of death.

Lyrically, when a band is firing mucky, attention-seekers like “My surname, my cum” and “This practical genius-like yeast infection” it’s very easy to dislike them (though vocalist Damo does apologise with “Sorry sorry sorry, what a criminal last line / There’s a mean streak in me when these fuck-ups are mine!”). However, when they do pull out hooked doozies like “Sweetheart, I couldn’t protect you / No matter how hard I tried” or “Girls couldn’t hit us with a running jump, Gods couldn’t hit us with a death-defying stunt” they know to ram them home with concerted repetition.

On the plus side, the groove on this beast is vast when it settles down – the latter half of the album should please the sludge fiends amongst you. The first half will sit pretty with the punks. Most will agree, the odd burst of rapping is more for show than it is essentially integral to the music and a high degree of patience and diligent attention is required to fully comprehend their ADD-afflicted concept. With so much content packed into such a small space, like a boxer on amphetamines, it’s generally going to miss as many times as it hits.

Also online = http://www.avenoctum.com/2013/10/antlered-man-the-devil-is-them-new-heavy-sounds/

Album Review: Melvins – Everyone Loves Sausages

Sausages – traditionally, a smashed pig piped into its own stomach lining. Pig – the food that the whole western world devours with such gusto. Bacon, ham, pork chops, sausages. That “wonderful, magical animal” that Homer Simpson refers to when contemplating such a variety of tasty offerings. What an album title, then, to make folks sit up and get heads moving. The carnivores amongst you will all be nodding them savagely, whilst meat-abstainers worldwide may well just sadly shake them. End of the day, there’s nothing to argue about. This sizzles either way.

Now, You’ll probably, like me, struggle to identify a fair few of these songs but I think it’s fair to say that they weren’t ever going to be straight-up reproductions. This is The Melvins (the “The” is silent here), after all, linking their influences and favourite tracks together, throwing their eccentric nous, twisted musicality and a few friends into the mix and emerging with an assorted jumble of flavours that should get your tastebuds churning.

Initially, Everyone Loves Sausages hits hard and heavy with Neurosis’ Scott Kelly guesting for a tear-up of Venom’s “Warhead”. Its mighty vocal lead will have heads bobbing and horns up. Soon though the band shift gears to relocate to something a little less gritty. Appeasing their rock and pop urges, they plump for The Fugs’ “Carpe Diem”, complete with its original warm 60s wash and jinking vibe and the stonking all-in rocker “Black Betty” (Ram Jam). There’s also a grating rendition of Queen’s “Best Friend” with tacked-on, plinking electro-fizz which Melvins develop, flesh out and turn into a hacked rendition of “Heathen Earth” (Throbbing Gristle). Sadly, they do take it a step too far with a 3-minute intro of gruesome ambient noise which kicks-off a preciously reedy version of Bowie’s “Station To Station”.

When they do find their punk muscle, they really set about tearing shit up for a twisted, rough-and-ready rip of The Jam’s “Art School”, complete with ex-U.S. marine Tom Hazelmyer’s anarchic Mockney accent causing much hilarity. There’s also “Timothy Leary Lives” (Pop-O-Pies) and a snotty-nosed cover of The Kinks’ “Attitude” (featuring Blondie’s Clem Burton) to gob all over.

Album highlights are undoubtedly Mudhoney’s Mark Arm giving his all to grunge-up “Set It On Fire” whilst, at the same time, giving The Scientists’ original a run for its money, and a big-bass, lush, loping, bluesy version of “Female Trouble”, the theme music to the infamous movie of the same name.

Refusing to completely ditch the impact of the originals, Melvins have stuck pretty close to the same tones and textures for the majority of the tracks here, but that’s not to say they aren’t worthwhile renditions. Not by a long chalk. There’s plenty that will provide some shocks and maybe a little awe. Some undoubtedly squeeze out above the others, but the whole, with its mainstream classics and underground rarities, stands proudly as a fair representation of the Melvins’ wide and varied record collections. In many ways, a true alternative Best Of The Melvins. Hungry, anyone?

Also online @ Ave Noctum = http://www.avenoctum.com/2013/04/melvins-everyone-loves-sausages-ipecac/

Album Review: The Melvins – Freak Puke

If ever there was a band with a tentacular reach it would be The Melvins. Attributed with kicking off the sludge scene in the early ’80s, the number of gnarly bands who will have been influenced by them by now must be in their thousands. With the full Melvins line-up still forging ever onward, founders vocalist/guitarist Buzz Osborne and drummer Dale Crover have taken a side-step for Freak Puke to team up with bassist Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk, Fantômas). The album cover attributes the artist as being The Melvins yet, as I understand it, the project has been cringingly-monikered Melvins-Lite, which sounds like some dodgy can of fizz. The music they are hammering out appears to follow the pattern of most Melvins material with plenty of familiar ground being covered, so don’t worry about taking any wild leaps of faith here.

Dunn’s enigmatic stand-up bass is the project’s twist and he’s there at every turn, be it helping to drive the track addictively forward with groovy finger-circling patterns or merely playing the fool. He gets to show off his range for the track ‘Baby, Won’t You Weird Me Out’ as Buzz and Dale stick him up front and centre. Initially he’s let loose with the bow, wrenching it across his instrument like he’s trying to saw it in half, but soon enough he chooses to tug at his strings which unites the trio so can they have a good old jam together. This sets the pace and establishes the album’s true direction.

With Buzz offering up sludgy, scathing guitar lines and Dale letting loose his pounding stickwork we’re marched neatly into these gritty verses and melodic, harmonised choruses. Dunn slots in sweetly, occasionally powering up with dissonance, injecting untold depth for a few bars or walking his way high up the fretboard. With the band offering up a real mixture of stylistic content there’s that sense of boundless abandon that usually frequents Melvins albums. There are doses of gunge-streaked, heavy-lidded blues for killer tracks like ‘A Growing Disgust’ and the Paul McCartney & Wings cover, ‘Let Me Roll It’, there’s a spot of doom and gloom about ‘Holy Barbarians’ and, oddly, the 10-minute shoegaze-rock-freakout of ‘Tommy Goes Berserk’, and there are licks of splatter’ n’ roll that ignite the gobby title track and the monstrous ‘Leon vs. The Revolution’, where Buzz steps up to the plate by ramping up his vocal to the point of disintegration. They have never been a band that you can trust to conform and that’s just how we like them…

…up to a point. They’re always prepared to go one step further than I, for one, wish they would, and here they make an attempt to obliterate the structures with a few experimental surprises. There’s the disconcertingly realistic, splitting wood effect, the rebounding cornball vocal samples and the maddeningly frequent blasts of feedback. These all pale into insignificance next to the moments when they hand the baton over to Dunn to seek out tuneless, cosmic anomalies with his bowed-string action (he gets the troublesome ‘Inner Ear Rupture’ all to himself); that’s everything from churning out deep, long whale sounds to the sound of a thousand crawling insects. Novel or novelty? I’d suggest a bit of both.

If Melvins-Lite really was a beverage, it would be loaded with guarana to boost you for prolonged bouts of rocking out. Of course, there’d be side-effects, some of which would most likely include paranoid delusions or the odd wild flashback – the point is it would definitely come with a Governmental health warning attached. Naturally, I’d be the one clearing the shelves; chugging it down like it was going out of fashion.

Also online @ TLOBF = http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/albums/the-melvins-freak-puke-91041