The last album arrived like a rusty bullet train runaway in the dead of night, in an electrical storm, ripping out of the static fog with its halogen lamps overloading. It was the filth and the fury and its bastard love child. They tore around the globe in a discordant blaze of red and black. They seemed like a band who knew that and nothing else and they’d ride it till the wheels ground off. It was never really expected to get any bigger or grow a new head. But oh my, this is bigger. The bastard love child grew up, and is at the controls carrying a serial psychosis without the appropriate licence and demolishing buildings. Big fucking monstrous buildings.
The album opens with a burgeoning, rippling surge of feedback and dissonance, psychotic drums trunk their way through the parting cracks, splurging into the resonating, pounding, deadly gaping punk rock of ‘Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers’. Think Dave Grohl beating you a new face as Kurt Cobain orchestrates his noisy dissent in the background of Nirvana’s ‘Scentless Apprentice’, or ‘Radio Friendly Unit Shifter’, and you’ll be in the right ballpark of intensity.
Singer Joe Cardimone screams his way passionately and classically through 13 equally magnificent sonic collisions like a random jumble of Iggy Pop, Robert Plant and Bobby Gillespie’s extreme chromosomes. And aside from the peaking, precision and more ambitious riffery on the likes of ‘Caviar’ and ‘Kiss The Lizards’ that has led their Stooges-in-the-electric-chair racket up to the next level, his vocals end up nothing short of legendary. As a whole imagine Ikara Colt dragged out of their inner city confines, thrown into the scorching desert heat and injected with adrenaline. This makes their debut merely sound like a mental out-patient walking up, stretching and giving a shuddering yawn. And that is praise indeed.