Saturday, March 13, 2010

DAUGHTERS "S/T" (Hydrahead)

I'll try and keep it brief, just this once. This record is fucking sick. Total sermon-on-the-mount, sweat soaked fire and brimstone "end times message" style pontification delivered via 28 minutes of ultra-crazed, tight yet waaaay too spastic rainbow colored noise rock. Daughters are pretty much in their own space here and no one's even coming close to being on the same wavelength. Think Jesus Lizard meets Atari Teenage Riot meets the Kittens with some ZZ Top thrown in and you might be some of the way there but you're a far cry from actually digesting how awesome this record is. This is lean, cut to the bone, all excess removed utterly necessary rock action. Guitars don't sound like guitars. Drums are a repetitive blurred out monster, smashing and flailing at everything. Even the air is getting a beating. Vocals are deranged, like the rant of a crazed street schizo crossed with a little of Gibby Haynes' drug prattle and a whole lot of David Yow's "holy shit i'm really fucking crazy and violent" swagger. Someone's playing some keyboards and someone's probably brandishing a switchblade. It's a fucking debacle, a gorgeous pugilistic mess. This is music to get beat up to.
Daughters used to be a sort of whacked out grind band. They've always been askew (they're on Hydrahead, after all) but on this record they are just out of the whole goddamn park. There is nothing tethering them to earth here. They sound like emissaries from a weird planet of hyper psychotic zealots determined to convert you to their sweet way of interpretation. Life is nasty and pungent and there's dirt underneath every fingernail but fucking-a is that some colourful, crazy, shimmery explosive dirt. You'd do well to scoop up a handful, take a deep whiff and tell me what you see in there. Do you see yourself getting drunk? Are you slapping someone across the face while your vision slowly turns white? Are you telling a stranger that "Magnolia" is the shit and that every character William H. Macy plays is beyond your emotional comprehension (study the lyrics-you'll get it)? Does the prospect of swinging an axe, for whatever reason, seem more and more enticing with each passing moment? Are you fluxing in and out of reality? Are the dimensions making noises at you? Are you beginning to see swarms of bees in between all of the stars? Then this record is the testimony and the salvation.
Fucking awesome.

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