I can’t remember what I was doing twenty years ago, let alone what this band sounded like. So I did a quick sonic refresher, and refreshing it was. The last studio album, with a title even longer than this one, was released on the Too Pure label, as was 2002’s mclusky do dallas. That was the first time I heard this band. A noise fueled guitar attack like a Jesus Lizard driving over Frank Zappa with the Pixies in some Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster scenario. 2004 hit with the difference between you and me is that i’m not on fire, showing the band with a new drummer and a sound that took the previous album and moved it towards somewhere else. Somewhere harder, thicker, more diverse, more dynamic. Slicing in with Steve Albini angles and more perfect guitar noise. Hints of P.I.L. meshing with June of 44 and playing with dark shadowed minimalistic raw post-hardcore bliss. And then?
Then cut to twenty years later and the world is still here and so are we. So true. We may be older, but we are no wiser. And this band is no quieter. Swinging right back into some Birthday Party Hee-Hawing and crushing into some Fall splintered singles and post-grunge shuddering guitar crunches.
This melodically noisy Welsh trio has not lost a single ounce of energy or edge in the past two decades. From the opening crunch of “unpopular parts of a pig”, which sounds like Franz Ferdinand on speed and anger, to the Nomeansno bass drive of “kafka-esque novelist franz kafka”, with those punk vocals sliding through, John Lydon sharp, and being pulled along by razor guitars. Then, between the double edge bass / guitar / vocal attack that hits back and forth between Damien Sayell and Andrew Falkous, you get Jack Egglestone laying down the drums and percussion hits. Such superb style. This provides a solid beat base that both pushes and pulls the songs to where they need to be.
The finale, hitting like Jarvis Cocker on a super bad acid trip, brings this solid album to a close, and leaves us hoping … praying … that we won’t have to wait too long for the next epic release.
