Talk of power in records – true power, the sort whose immediate effects require a medical diagnosis – comes oh so flippantly on a day to day basis. The truth in the vast majority of cases is that the power referred to is in fact just volume, or distortion, things administered artificially to disguise a much less extraordinary reality. And the sad fact of the matter is that in an age when we have noises and entwined propaganda beamed at us from myriad sources twenty-four-seven, quantity arguably winning over quality, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell these apart. Until that is you’re presented with the real deal. The first 2 minutes 47 seconds of Modey Lemon’s second record ‘Thunder & Lightening’ is one such moment which resets your perspective back to zero.
That time is taken up by opening track ‘Crows’, each passing second bringing rolling blasts of intensity that evoke stoner rock, desert psychedelia, 70s metal, punk rock and dragging into one hazy mass influences as wide ranging as Hendrix, Black Sabbath and The Stooges. It’s headfuck soup. And this ain’t dressed up as anything it isn’t, it’s primitive and concentrated, and it sounds like it’s running off one overloaded plug-socket. You can sense the lights dimming with each grubby fuzzed-up whack of guitar.
It’s direct in all of its urges. Packed full of peaking drums that can’t be beat hard enough, sharp, repetitive, overdriven Jon Spencer-esque riffery and cosmic bass that never reduces its hypnotic hold over you. And the no-nonsense lyrics, equally mystical and attitude-laden, are barked out with an immediacy that might sound clichéd coming from less capable souls but make sense here; “I’d rather be yer enemy, than to be nothing at all” (‘Enemy), “She became a predator, she had all me, but she wants more” (‘Predator’), “He can send out a current, like a river to the ocean” (‘Electronic Sorcerer’). Like the eyes of a rabid skinhead buzzing on ketamine, this is an intensity you can’t argue with.