This is far from the Arizona band's first rodeo as they have been around for ten years now and banging out synth punk before the kids with mustaches got ahold of it and to be honest those same where sporting angular bangs and intending to a bunch of MySpace emo at the time Ryan Rousseau was banging around with Jay Retard, and now the synths are buried amid the rest of the feedback as the band is now less what is being call Krautrock and more punk than not, though they fire out swinging with noisy out burst holding more in common with the Mc5 than what kids at the Warp Tour consider punk rock. the sprawling swirl of unitedly distortion comes straight at you from the opener "Evil Man" that falls some where in the feedback like if Thurston Moore had laced the bong with pcp in the early days of Sonic Youth...think pre-Day Dream Nation.
the cavernous croon on "Blame" keeps this from falling into the cut and paste garage affair and puts the band in a zip code close to A Place To Bury Strangers, though their restraint gives way to the predictable caterwauling. The tone still remains fairly dark so goths who like the explosive elements of songs like "The Passion of Lovers" would still be able to bat away cowbells in the club to this.
Of the albums six songs one of them "Drug Lore " is less of a somg and more of an interlude of feed back and noise , scratching at strings and other almost ritualistic sounds as if the drug gods of punk are being invoked. So when it get to my little scoring calculations I'm not factoring it in to the formula.
On the driving "Great Wall" I like the punch where it kicks back in from the vocals and admire the guitarist ability to fill the space with noise and allow the bass some breathing room to the song down the dark winding highway. By the time it gets to the raunchy stomp of "Exterminate" I've decided these guys are sardonic enough for me, this one has a lot of punch to it, more aggressive than death rock but darker than punk they remind me of when the two genres where more merged and bands like T.S.O.l and the Dammned held the middle ground appealing to both genres. The difference here is the Halloween elements in the feel of goth are not present instead it's more of a murky dark created by the labyrinth of feedback.
For all the scruffy edges there is still a dark depth to "Smoke Dreams" it rolls through a subterranean wasteland in a rambling jam, where the feedback takes the spotlight, it's an odd premise for an instrumental almost like surf rock For the lower level of Mordor. I think more open minded metal kids cold get into the drive this has though it never touches on metal itself. As a whole I think this album serves as a fine advertisement for the bands live show which I can imagine from hearing this is an excercise in ringing ears and fevered clamouring. They happen to currently be touring with one of my favorite new bands Merchandise, who I have yet to review on here unless they happen to pop up in a weekly shuffle, so I'm looking forward to ruining some more of my hearing and wished Iceage was filling the throu slot rather than Milk Money but those are the breaks. While the instrumental is good for the back ground an dim sure lends itself to an interesting jam live on album it's not my thing as when it comes to instrumental you either have to be Mogwai or King Crimson to keep me listening but the other songs are solid and I was pleasantly surprised at how dark they were so I'll give this one an 8 and see how it grows on me.
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