Initially coming in as a very raw punk band with nods to Crass and The Fall, but with some thicker doom metal, and noise influences coming across, there is also a unfaltering humour in the face of some unseen adversity.
This album is held together by a selection of samples that give it all a surrealist psyche feel reminiscent of The Mothers Of Invention if they’d all been junkies in Scotland.
Layers of overly distorted guitars stack up on tracks such as “he thinks he can hear voices” which gives an eery sensation as inane (or insane) mutterings create backing vocals to a sneering lead vocal that seems to be suggesting we lynch the person who hears to voices. But the sentiments are always delivered rapped up in sarcasm such that you’re not sure what to feel, think or do.
Elsewhere in the album there are noise collages with disturbing samples in place. And recording techniques on tracks such as “Toto in Africa” which are overtly lofi, such that everything drops out and the vocals are pure distortion. “Colacurcio” is a droney track with drawling vocals that then mixes into a radio track you half recognise before disolving again, so you’re not sure what you were listening to. This effect is clearly intentional but is also massively disconcerting and the album slowly twists around your head such that it becomes a series of highly amusing, intelligent or surreal samples and quotes held together by these noise-punk interludes. Spoken word sections drill home the continuous feeling of mental illness throughout the album, and give a disturbing edge to the whole affair.
The artwork is a childishly computerised collage of images from the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, one side all happy, with ducks, flowers and rainbows and the reverse side with the wicked witch, skulls, snakes, munch’s scream, Ian Brady and Mira Hindley.
In terms of imagery of lyrics, sounds, samples, noises and riffs it’s all stacked up to induce a sensory overload, in a similar way to the literary work of William Burroughs, it is thick with imagery and references that you could never decipher but simultaneously feels very slap-dash and joyously put together without too much concious effort. Definitely worthy of re-listens to slowly absorb the myriad of images & sounds, but also like a bad trip that you may not want to revisit, it is possibly best for your health if you do, so as to dispel the ‘demons’
Karl M V Waugh - photography/poetry 