Feral Ohms is a gritty, unhousebroken rock ‘n/'r roll presage from Oakland, CA, and side hustle of Comets on Fire’s vocalist/ guitarist Ethan Miller. Their sound is like an unhinged MC5 with a grizzly speckling of psychedelia and noise rock poking its coat like a scaly case of mange. They were in good company when their self-titled album dropped in 2016, as it was an era when wild-eyed mutants like OBN III, Zig Zags, and The Shrine roamed the piss and pilsner-lacquered dens of the American underground like packs of distempered hyenas. The group's self-titled debut studio LP is their only full-length album—if you don’t count live albums (which I don’t). Many of the tracks on this album had previously been released through a series of 7” singles that subsequently slithered free of the suctioned grip of Alternative Tentacles or were featured on their aforementioned live LP, lobbed from the tower of John Dwyer's Castle Face Records. Even with most of these tracks being rehomed for this LP, it’s far from sounding like a second-hand snoozer. Even with most of these tracks being rehomed for the purpose of this LP, it's far from sounding like a second-hand snoozer. “Living Junkyard” is a real kick in the teeth with its muscular anthemic riffs that push the ante of Ethan's mongrel howl straight over the moon. “Super Ape” with its crushing chords, celestial bridges, and earthquakin' bass grooves has all the bone-compacting strength and devastating force of a car-crusher or an industrial-sized blender designed to turn whole steers into beef-purée... and probably puts about as much demand on the local power grid as either as well. Then there are “Sweetbreads” with its Zeppelin aping, arena-sized riffs, and album closer “The Glow” which is a jammy, Soundgarden cribbing, blues freak-out that's about as subtle as a tsunami generated by off-shore atomic testing. It's an ideal record to drop the needle on if you're looking to wind yourself up into a blind frenzy- as applicable and timely today as it was back in 2016.
