Listening with an open mind. Writing about what I hear.
Do you have something interesting you'd like to share? Write Mick at thasoundblog@gmail.com.
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Worship the Weird is the debut album* from Chicago doom metal band, Sacred Monster (from 2019, a very popular year for rehashing stalwart tales of cosmic horror for whatever reason). They perform a muscular blues-riff anchored interpretation of classic NWOBHM and doom grooves ala Pentagram, with vocals that run the gambit of strained reptilian cries interspersed with the clean ring of King Diamond-esque salvos. The contents of their songs are mostly homages to classic horror and sci-fi, presented with an appropriate measure of Cryptkeeper camp. Like the stomping Twilight Zone tribute "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," the uncanny Clutch-worshiping stutter-groove retelling of an '80s cult-classic "Re-Animator," and the superb, pugnacious knuckle-duster and Dark Tower homage "Face of My Father." The vampy-er tracks tell original stories, with "The Wraith," depicting a story of revenge from beyond the grave with a burning Orange Goblin-esque bridge, and the epic Candlemass-meets-King Diamond haunted asylum tour of "Waverly Hills." Embrace your weirder side and give this a spin.
Bottna is the Slowcraft Records debut of Stockholm electronic duo Johan Kisro and Petter Lindhagen, known to us as Dött ljus (if you know any Swedish, this is your chance to turn to a friend, who is presumably reading this review simultaneously with you, in the same room, and tell them, "'Hey, Dött ljus' means Dead Light in Swedish," which I am positive will impress them and make them feel more warmly about you as a friend).* Bottna is a brief but impactful listen, submerging its audience in abidingly subtle textures and generously affected moods, that amasss in a gentile swell of nostalgia-priming motifs, as if the chain of memories that laces the quotidian turns of your life into a cognisant pattern were to materialize into a clear, babbling brook, which covers and rushes over you, wetting your face and hands like a baptismal font while eroding the grief and rueful dolor that weighs you to pitted, the sandy bed where your body is stretched prone. Sharp, interposed, and intently articulated beats tickle your ears like the nipping claws of hermit crabs come to whisper a lonesome tale to you in your sleep, accompanied by the soft clattering music of their shifting shells. Breathing sonic architecture contorts and molts like a chrysalis paroling its delicate ward into the catching breeze, while birds comprised of insulated copper and painted aluminum scourer for scraps of tinted vinyl and strips of celluloid to bump up the Boho of the nest they've made in an weathered and sagging willow tree they share with a family of kodama. There is no ceiling to the heights of experience which Bottna contains, only a bedrock of vivid, transformative sound.
I've been a fan of Pete's work with artists since the start of this blog. His work with Colorfield Records is completely in line with the ethos of my own blog, and in encountering his discography, it made me realize that I am not alone in championing the deserving but underrecognized talent of the world. He gives session musicians and unsung studio heroes a chance to really test their limits and craft music that is challenging to make but easy to enjoy. There are far too few people doing what Pete is doing, but the world is made much more interesting due to his efforts. Check out the interview below:
Featured in this interview is music from Nicole McCabe's recent Colorfield Records release, A Song To Sing. Check it out here:
This episode is, in part, dedicated to the great George Lowe, one of the greatest comedic voice actors of all time. Leaving us far too soon, he's returned to his home (Cartoon) planet for a well-deserved rest. RIP (1957-2025)
Shadowy cinematic psychedelic pop out of Italy, that could have been written for a David Lynch film with ambitions for mainstream crossover appeal. Combining light oaky percussion, with ghostly synths, ambling guitars, and sultry vocals, the dusky ye-ye duo known as WOW cut an evocative and haunting sonic silhouette on their fourth album, Come La Notte. This is an effortlessly cool record that can be easily slotted into a late-night rendezvous with a good book or a long evening drive for an indelible interjection of je ne sais quoi. Opener “Come La Notte” has a somber spaghetti-western vibe to it, “Nina” adds some lush sweeping vocal harmonies to the mix, while “Morire Per Amore” has a timeless ‘60s psych-R’nB quality, and “Occhi Di Serpente” casts a deep and alluring spell with its trancey saturated bassline and tide-rolling melody. A truly strange and delightful listen.
Deploying a sonic barrage of culture-jamming ballistics from the savanna of perdition that is Neo-Melbourne, ESP Mayhem is the EVP of the ghost in the machine. On a day like today, and in an age like our own, we are all plugged in like flesh transistors neuralinked into a info-validating supply chain that stamps the leveled realities and hyperreal phantasms auto-generated by smiling maskless faces acting as temporary receivers of a transient silicon-threshed symbolic order with the briefest of imprint of our consciousness before consigning these bubbles of fleeting joy to the abyss along with a fragment of our souls- like gum smeared on plywood. ESP Mayhem extends themselves through the gates, ports and check-passes of the nauseatingly manifold mirage of digital excess and unclarity that define the quicksand-like qualities of the concrete world to bully the leveler pullers and burst the tension of the spell that's been cast over us- finding salvation through sublation and recuperating their humanity through agitated accelerationism. Their latest EP Cyber Bully emerged in 2024 to shake down crypto nerds and relieve them of the burden of their hallucinatory lucre while reshuffling the static of stultifying overexcitement that snow blinds our perception in the hopes that a dose of the right kind of chaos can produce an epiphany of eschatological significance... that and they really just like to fuck shit up. You can check out my interview with the band below; it reads a little like the manifesto of a terrorist sect that Johnny Mnemonic might have had to rely on in a pinch for information and logistics. It gets giga-gonzo, you've been warned.
Who participates in ESP Mayhem, and how do they contribute?
Bruce - Synth; Clock - Vocals; K@rrl - Synth; Klown - Synth; Ralph - Drums. We might change the names and/or people around in the future.
What is the thesis or animating logic behind the group?
In our view, extreme music is an arms race. It's a race that can never be won because the escalation will never stop. The goal is to make the most unsentimentally rageous [sic] and mechanistically horny music we can. Even if we do something that reaches the goal it’s already history because it’s just a matter of time until it’s surpassed. The only options are to go even further or give up. Hyperextend until you explode.
How did you settle on your name?
We decided our logo should combine a metal band’s logo and a logo from outside that world. The combined logos had to form a phrase or word that worked as a band name independent of the source material, and the component logos had to have finger-snap recognisability. There was a very short list of bands, brands and logos that worked. We appropriated Mayhem and ESPN as a graphic shorthand for sonic extremity on the one hand, and the sublimation of violence through spectacle on the other. We chopped “ESPN” down to “ESP”, in the sense of “Extra-Sensory-Perception”, to underline the psychic dimension. Hence ESP Mayhem. The name means no distinction between our music and everything else in the product-scape, no brakes on our out-of-control hubris, and no limits on what we’re prepared to steal.
Why grindcore?
Grindcore is obsessed with aggressive hyper-velocity, instantaneity and disposability. It’s also very information-dense, lots of notes in a hyper compressed burst. Tension, information overload, everything moving too fast - those are the only things in our lives anyway so it’d be dishonest to fuck around with anything else. It’s no accident that mass-entertainment is taking on more and more grindcore-like proportions and gestures. Because everyone feels and thinks this way now. It’s basically the most realistic music of all time.
Are you inspired by the work of other metal performers, or do your influences lie mainly elsewhere?
Melbourne has produced some great grindcore bands so we were lucky to see the style played by some of the best to do it. That’s the foundation of how we understand fast music and how we think it should feel. But we always want something more absurd and more brain-cracking. So we also plagiarise from the most antisocially jacked up, hyperactive dance music - speedcore, anything out of Newcastle (NSW) etc. There’s some worthless computer-world dross mashed in as well, nightcore and ear-biting 8 bit arpeggiation, high-fructose trash sounds designed to fry your pleasure centres [sic] into pouring more money/time down the shitter. Other than that, we just regurgitate the rising tempo of the sensory pummelling we’ve endured our entire lives, in the same way you might make yourself throw up after ill-advisedly eating a mysterious wrong-address delivery meal you find on your doorstep. IE an unpleasant but necessary action to avoid shitting yourself later on.
Was it a deliberate choice to exclude guitars from your ensemble, and if so, why?
It was an accidental, revelatory, bad, great idea. We happened to plug a synthesizer into a guitar amp and discovered you could make noise that lands like a tungsten cube dropped from orbit. No nuance or warmth, just pure force. But none of us had any experience playing electronic music. We don’t really understand how the instruments work, and we’re all intellectually paralysed from too much high pressure/low duration media (grindcore and grindcore-ized media in general) so it’s nearly impossible for us to learn. But synthesizers are just too loud and we’re addicted to power so we can’t stop. If someone accidentally bumps their instrument it instantly blows everyone’s ears out and we all scream in pain. It’s awful.
What was the thought process going into your latest release, Cyber Bully?
We wanted it to sound like Megatron trying to auto-fellate and accidentally machine-gunning his own head off. More piercing sonic aggression, more jarring speed-to-dance transitions, more blatantly ripping things off, more gleeful mockery and disrespect, just more. There’s no point or really any possibility of subtlety or thoughtfulness now so we always want to go as far and fast in the wrong direction as we can.
What are your thoughts on the circularity of time and history?
Time and history are circular, but also linear. We have no evidence to back this up, we just infer it from the overall feeling of constant upheaval combined with total inertia.
How do the contradictory but intersecting modern phenomena of stultifying boredom and constant excitement and/or agitation play out through your work?
Things are so continuously exciting now that excitement itself has become experientially boring, because it never lets up. Like when was the last time you didn’t feel angry, horny, scared or otherwise wound up. And it’s not just you, everyone is sitting there in a state of private agitation. But it’s not like you can opt out of the situation, so why not go further. There’s an episode of the TV show Max Headroom, where watching a high speed advertisement is found to spike the viewer’s nervous system to the point that they spontaneously combust. Ratchet up the boredom, ratchet up the pressure until the whole thing explodes in media-induced, self-obliterating tedium. You should be trying to cross that line, one way or another. Extreme boredom makes extreme music.
How does your work draw attention to the invasive nature of technology and underscore our intimacy with it?
Our band setup is like reverse-cybergrind, we kept the drummer and replaced all the guitars with prosumer electronic equipment. IE more unwanted and unasked-for change for the sake of it masked as “innovation” and “development”. It’s like what we see with technology, but even more stupid. People don’t really want it but we keep pushing it on them and eventually they give in. A few people might say it’s good, they don’t really think that, we just shoved it in their faces til they thought they did. After we convince them, it's not too long til they think they convinced themselves. But unlike the technologists we make no claim to be improving anything. We’re making things worse and more difficult, so perversely actually making things better.
How do you think our interactions with information technology, particularly social media, transform and augment our sense of identity and place in the world?
The Self As Asset has been realised through social media - the kipple machine that crushes everything into advertising, as it simultaneously crushes advertising into everything. The term Personal Brand used to get thrown around but you don’t hear it now cause the concept has become so internalised that it’s redundant - of course a person is a brand, why bring it up. Between Personal Branding and Corporate Personhood a circle is completed - on the one hand people take on the characteristics of brands, and on the other corporations take the characteristics of people. We’re encouraged to understand ourselves through the language of therapy but we should use the language of marketing instead, it’s more accurate.
How does the concept of "junkspace" relate to your approach, outlook, and output?
Neo-Melbourne is a quintessential junkspace. It’s like living in a big cardboard box full of print-on-demand neon signage. All lowest-bid-contract dross stretched over the skeleton of a failed plan. Nothing rings true here and things don’t work out for the good. So ESPM makes something else from the junk. We grab whatever we like and use it however we can to advance our project. You see the bare bones of everything we ripped off and how starkly we smashed it all together, a junkspace aesthetic. But it conforms to our logic now. The incongruities made sense all along, we are just stacking the pieces up in a way that makes the pattern reveal itself.
What is the value of novelty in popular culture at this moment? Is it still attainable, is it worth pursuing?
It’s not attainable but it’s worth pursuing. With pop culture It’s more straightforward and more rewarding to repeat things, and in life it’s easier to do nothing at all. But tomorrow will arrive whether you want it or not. And you have to put an idea forward if you don’t want more of the same. If we have to live in a bullshit future then we’re gonna try and make it our bullshit, not someone else’s, stinking the place up. And everyone else’s bullshit is ours now anyway. Intellectual property is theft and anyone bristling at their art/bullshit being stolen is dumb for imagining they’re losing something and a cop for caring. All we have ever done is lift so many touchstones from the manic ends of popular culture and music scenes into the one mix, so there’s nothing really new. But on paper ESP Mayhem is a novelty act because of what we steal and why. We would go further and say that now, every act should be a novelty act, and this is the only way to stay ahead of the kipple machine. Realise your own delusions or steal ours and turn it into something else, we don’t care. But you are either a novelty act or you enter the kipple factory, that’s the choice.
What if any, are the beneficial and ethical uses for AI in art and creative endeavors at this stage of its technological development?
There’s no ethical use for AI because it’s a big machine for ripping things off. ESPM is in direct competition with AI in that regard. And we are winning. With all the money and raw intellectual horsepower sloshing around in the AI industries it should be the other way around but no, we can rip things off faster, more totally and more fluently than the stupid AIs. That’s where we’re at, historically speaking. The great white hope of technological advancement has been outperformed by a synthgrind band from the Cleveland of the southern hemisphere. It’s a grim outlook.
What does the term "cyberpunk" mean to you in relation to your work, if anything?
“Neo-Melbourne” alludes to the idea that all those old Cyberpunk stories have been more or less realised in our present day. But the term cyberpunk is historical now, it makes sense as a pinterest moodboard but doesn’t quite capture the flavour of this moment. We need a new anachronistic portmanteau to describe a world of grinning human sharks swimming upstream in a sea of techno-garbage. It should keep the “social technics vs music subculture” form of “Cyberpunk”, but instead blend the relentless pumping of uptempo hardcore, with overblown CCRU-style net-mysticism. Something like Xenodonk, or Deus Ex Makina.
What is the most dystopian part of living in Melbourne?
Smelling the countryside burn as you walk past 3-million-dollar townhouses in your old neighbourhood.
Admitting this will likely make me sound completely unhinged, but whenever I order a drink at a restaurant or a kiosk, I have an irrational paranoia that the person preparing my order is going to bleed in it. This has never happened in experience (as far as I know), and it doesn't cause me much anxiety, but whenever I watch someone pouring coffee or dispensing juice, I can't help but think, "If they got a nosebleed right now, there is only about a foot between their nostrils and my beverage, and then my drink could end up with an extra-iron supplement in it." I can't account for this aspect of my psychology. It could be the result of some starved desire for affection (not that my conscious mind is aware of such a deficit) or the rendering down of the literal transaction occurring (me buying a coffee) into base biological terms (there is a fluid transfer from the barista to me in exchange for currency). Whatever it is, the reality of someone adding their own brand of syrup extract to my morning joe probably wouldn't be that bad for me- the iron would help me maintain my own hemoglobin and might even assist me in warding off restless leg syndrome. Now that I've put this out into the world, someone is probably going to pass me a pink lemonade that they flavored themselves just to vindicate me and my anguished fixations for no reason other than I was foolish enough to say something about one of my mild phobias in public. Oh well, I can always use more viscera to liven up my day- I seek it out in movies, video games and music, why not in everything I consume? Sometimes I think it's the lack of carnality that keeps me from celebrating the shoegaze "revival" as much as others. It's not that I never write about shoegaze bands... It's just that it can be a challenge to get excited about release after release of nearly indistinguishable waves of distortion and weightlessness, inconsequential vocal deliveries that all too often define the genre. D.C.'s Pinky Lemon feels like they are headed in the right direction on their 2024 EP, Pinky Hell, though. I would certainly describe the group as part of the footgazi resurgence taking hold in the corridor between Philadelphia and the Capitol at the moment, but like Soft Body 2, the distortion and feedback that they rely on is slightly more crystalized and concretely compelling than what you might find elsewhere, helping to further focus the sharply toothsome rhythms that they employ. The interplay between groove and texture is a very important sight of exploration for the band, with many moments on Pinky Hell conjuring for me something akin to the spooky, danceable crisis of an early '00s witch house mix, one that reinterprets My Blood Valentine as a sort of lost media artifact, reconstructed from scrapes and slivers extracted from the detritus of an abandoned vaporwave YouTube channel. Opener, "Floodgate" sounds strikingly blown out, saturating the senses with dreamy chords that cluster around the ears like stray daydreams, emitting strobes of brilliant variegated thunder before dissipating into a mist of nectarous talc. The following track, "1 MIL" confirms the overall embodied nature of the album, a suitably urgent pop-punk pounce that skitters on its nails like a cat on ice through portals of elegant clarity- a struggle for preeminence that it can only glimpse before collapsing back into its fleshy confines, and ultimately stumbling over the border of safety and into a discordant gap of mechanical cardiac cycles that is "Reuploading." The reverent plunge of "Cheer" sounds like the band slow-motion crashing a space cruiser they boosted from an Ultra Deluxe album's lore, only to survive their mishap by ruggedly reverting to a post-amplified state of acoustic punk, that graciously molts into a blossom of dissident Deftones inflected tweecore on "i died // nvm." Through all its changes and transgressions, Pinky Hell ultimately settles into its final form on "2 MIL," a breakbeat-backed soul-scrubber that feels like it's exfoliating a deep region of your essence with its raw, contorting chords and cooling scrapes of glassy-glinting synths that ends as abruptly as a title card reading "To be continued...". A sanguine parting note for one hell of an album.
Ails was the second phase of vocalist Laurie Shanaman and guitarist Christy Cather’s life work of reshaping the American metal scene. The duo first played together in the phenomenal black metal band Ludicra, where they advanced a fresh take on the acidic hail-storm of second-wave blast-beats and tremulous, while adding a momentous sense of atmosphere and vamperic folk-rock, complemented by Shanaman’s amphibious growl and the occasional clean singing segment. Ails on their LP, The Unraveling, is a less straightforward rock project than their previous band. Here they double down on bleak, damp atmosphere, not in a metal hipster, “ambient” or shoegazey kind of way, instead embracing elements of death-doom a la Hooded Menace, while striving to write serrated, alienating riffs that fulfill the eldritch covenant of their Nordic forbearers. The harsh whirlwind of cresting tremulous, coiling grooves, acid-plaque feedback, and wounded female vocal squalls may not be welcoming to the uninitiated, but given a chance, these tortured missives can be a cathartic departure for you and your more adventurous listeners.
The Unraveling is Ails’s debut LP released by the practitioners of dark, inscrutable sound curation over at The Flenser, and unfortunately, it may also be their last as it was released in 2018, and they have yet to produce a successor. Another vibrant alternative metal project, cut down in its youth by expositio, or maybe lack thereof...
I'd be very surprised to learn that any of the guys from Atlanta's Michael Cera Pallin could see another country from their house- even if they were to stand on their roofs and hike up on their toes. Atlanta's pretty far removed from most internationally recognized partitions, unless there is a micronation nearby like Petoria that I'm oblivious to.* But who am I kidding (Not you! I'm nothing but honest with you!), being part of a scene and a subculture can be like being a member of your own private nation in some ways- there are customs and borders, anthems and sites of worship, ambassadors and refugees, etc...- so I guess you could say that they see another foreign provenance from their place of residence after all, observing the clueless barbarian roaming around the city gates of their polity, blind to the riches concealed from their line of sight. If you could count yourself so bold, curious, and gallant, then maybe you could find yourself an honored guest, or at least an unmolested tourist, within their domain. Personally, I'm taking MCP's debut LP We Could Be Brave, as just that, a summons to a world beyond my provincial purview. Take, if you will, the stocky punch and roll of opener "Feast or Famine," which mediates the strummy affectedness of Mom Jeans with an overhanded volley approach to PUP venerating melody, dipping around your defenses and rocking you with a stunning ploy of earnest reflection and whiplash-hooks- it's almost too insistent that you give into band's steering command- lassoing you with elastic rhythms and reeling you into a zone of near claustrophobic catharsis. The next track is even more emphatic, acting like a cyclone that siphons the grief, pride, and fervor of the Mid-West and Great Lakes regions and funnels them into a concentrated etching tool that the band uses to carve their debts and deficiencies into the sands of time, only to witness them being washed away by the ripples and tides their own presence produces in the waters of Chronos- wiping the slate as if it were marked with mere chalk and not the fragments of past selves. Elsewhere, a rain of fluttering portraits showers from above, scattering and plastering themselves against burning pillars of searching clarity caught in counter-currents of amplified distortion and clashing social principles on the flea-bitten stinger "Murder Hornet Fursona"- the high points of which are met with, almost like the repetition of a poem, in a variation on mood, in the audacious and post-punky dip and drag of the justifiably discourteous, twinkle-spark scan "Gracious." Later down the line, we encounter "Despite," which sounds like the afterthoughts that bubble up out of the slick of mud that's been washed off a clear conscience, followed by the bashy balancing act "Broken Face," which teeters on the margins of both self-help and self-implosion without any apparent indicators as to which demarcation it would prefer to land. It's fitting, but rarely encountered that an album will conclude with the title track, almost like a final curtain drop after the listener has been pulled up on stage to take part in the closing bow- this bow lasts for 11 minutes though, and transitions through several fiery build-ups and busts, making the conclusion of the album more like an obstacle course you run with friends rather than a soft breathy kiss goodnight (not that it doesn't contain an appropriate air of finality- the band just seems to have trouble letting you go by the end after having spent so much time to get to know you). There are those who are could be brave enough to be themselves and seek out kindred souls, and then there are those who are brave enough to step fully into such a commonwealth of kinship- I think, despite their modesty, Michael Cera Palin can be counted as the latter.
Digging into the back of my crates to find the unrequited relics of a previous eon of musical obsession. When my lungs look like two bowls of spilled porridge running down the rungs of my rib cage from breathing in all this disintegrated binding glue spewed from crumbling heaps of vinyl, I hope you kids will appreciate what I've done for you here... who am I kidding? I'd do this sort of thing even if it didn't pay!* Lock in because I've got a sleeper hit** for y'all, salvaged from the dumpster fire of 2016. A gem passed from one dying era to another. Buzzy, angular garage rock out of Boston, MA, that knows no limits, up to and including the maximum gain on their amps- torquing that sucker all the way over and then popping it off like a loose toenail. Earth Heart is the kind of stabby, rudimentary rock that was more or less prototypical indie-sleaze rock, released at just about the time that all the filth and vital furry had rung from that scene's collective amygdalas. Homesick is their debut and final LP, the end was the beginning, and the beginning was the end, and so on you see. Instrumentally, they're pretty much Joy Division meets the Thermals with surf guitars. Vocally, we have something like Cassie Ramone doing an Iggy Pop impersonation. Pitchfork would have rubbed themselves raw over this album had it dropped during the first Obama administration, but back in '16 they were too busy chasing ad payola and playing footsie with pop-star publicists to singe their prissy little fingers on Earth Heart's fire-digging frenzy. And now? Well, now they have better things to do, apparently, like pushing high gloss photos and premium cologne on a demographic that barely deodorizes and regularly wears Ts and jeans to graduation parties and family funerals alike.*** That's fine. Their loss. You're here and not there because you and I know where the goods are buried, and hate to get our feet wet- so we seek higher ground and avoid sinking ships. Speaking of high points, the songwriting on Homesick is as classic as it comes, simplistic, even riffy, and wonderfully uncomplicated with a reverb-y finish. My favorite track on the album is probably “Homesick” with its carefree air and stipulated jangle guitars, drawing lyrically from singer Katie Coriander’s years as a bald-headed vagabond, squatting across the country after spontaneously throwing away all her possessions and abandoning her apartment. I’d also recommend the stumbling, dark rockabilly cruiser “Burn,” and the rhythmic post-punky twirl of “Iron Lung” as good places to start. Really though there is no bad place to drop the needle on this one. Even almost a decade into its existence, Homesick holds up as a statement in its own right, as well as a final flaring whisp of a waning era- sturdy as it is stirring- dependable even as the passion it excuses threatens to burn the casa that it's raised down to the floorboards.
Chancha Via Circuito is an Argentinian folk artist and hip-hop producer who I would have considered the tip of the cumbia music revival spear back when I first discovered him in 2018. I couldn't tell you if his stuff is still considered cutting edge in those spaces anymore, as I lost the pulse of where Latin folk meets contemporary electronic music about three years ago. However, I'm glad that I'm revisiting his work, as it's introducing me to his second collab with British-born, Latin-beat empresario El Búho, a bright and atmospherically dense EP titled, Tenalach. Chancha Via Circuito's music integrates a number of pan-South American influences into his compositions, including dancehall, Andean folk, and southern hemisphere house, all of which blend wonderfully with El Búho's skill for smoothing out rhythms and heightening the aura of a mix in order to embellish it's layered, furtive secrets. For Tenalach the duo leads the listener deep into the green hearth at the center of a cathedral made of lush living walls- the gate to a digital wilderness and sandbox of sorts where your body can become as weightless as a dancing leaf or as settled and firm as the trunk of a great tree- where the possibilities of adventure and etching one's own radical form of semiotics are limitless, but not as myriad as the furrows for acquiescence into the mossy, aboding logic of the lavishly and iconically abundant glade of this emaculatly cultivated environ. In short, it is what the soundtrack to EarthBound might have sounded like if it had taken a detour through the Serranía de Chiribiquete before hitting a sidequest in the Andes. There might not be any place like home, but there is truly no other place quite like Tenalach.
With the world perpetually feeling like it's about to lurch off its axis and go peeling off into the starry abyss, keeping yourself out of a state of delirium can be a full-time commitment. Like with any long-term obligations, though, sometimes you just need a break and to let yourself have a manic episode now and again- you know, as a little treat. That seems to be the angle Swedish synth-punks Shady Lady and the Malefactor are coming from, and it's working out just dandy for them on their peculiarly monikered debut EP, A Nickname. Sounding like a demented B-52s who have timeskipped backward from a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-esque future hellscape to our present day, they embody a playfully antagonistic bacchanal of paranoia and tinfoil-chewing tenacity, folded into the ragged swaddle of siren-spiral sonics, lances of lysergic oscillations, and an afterburn of radiant space-aged sanguinity that's become twisted and scorched to the bone while plummeting through the acidic atmosphere of our waste-trap of a planet. Big proclamatory hooks hassle the senses and redecorate the interior of your headcase to make it ready for a host of unsettled moods, observations, and atypical trysts in a kind of inverted cerebral feng shui, digging out a firepit atop your brainstem in which a blaze of impish psychic turmoil can burn unobstructed. It all might be a bit much to swallow if it weren't so infectiously catchy, but there is no panacea for this kind of cognitive virus Shady Lady and the Malefactor are passing around- you just have to let this strain of rock and roll rubella roil until the fever breaks- which frankly, doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon. Get ready to spin-out in style!
