Wackiness.org Reviews Archive § Music

This album is hard to describe, but I'll give it a shot: It's chaotic, abrasive noise-punk that wants to love you with melody and kill you with noise at the same time. It's like Deerhoof meets Satan. The lyrics are all unintelligble, as they are screamed into a small microphone attached to a tatterred ski mask the drummer wears; they all tend to come out as kind of a repeated "HAAUUURGGH HUUUUAAGH", which is fine, and matches the speed and tone of the music perfectly. "Assassins", "Dracula Mountain", "Two Towers" and "On Fire" are all songs that, for all their noisy randomness, contain actual melodies that are actually catchy. "Longstockings" and "Wonderful Rainbow" provide a brief pause from the intense noise--"Longstockings" is more of a Hella-type song, less noisy and more structured, while "Wonderful Rainbow" sounds just like the title implies, an almost soothing, quiet piece of guitar work; afterward it jumps immediately back to noisy, and the following songs eventually get kind of tiresome, lacking the appeal of tracks two through five. They bring the overall score down a bit, along with the fact that it takes a lot of energy to keep up with. Still, this album (or selections from it) is (are) a must-listen(s) for fans of anything metally, anything noisy, anything punk, anything rock, anything new and different.

Rating

83/100

Reviewer

Noah Jackson

Published

September 06, 2003