Sometimes there’s just no getting away from the dirt, the discomfort, the filth. It’s under your skin, it’s in your hair, it’s stuck between your teeth. You’re a grubby smudge on the perfect white skin of all existence. Yes, we’re talking to you, Jackieo. Wipe the spittle from you chin! Here are a band that actively exhilarate you about your impurities, make your tainted hairs stand on end and throw you the spade to find the hidden depths you didn’t quite know you had. There is little doubt that at least one of them has some dark shameful fetish. And they come brandishing a debut album that is the audio equivalent of the ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ video; disturbed, violent, tanked up, perverted and flecked by blood and vomit. This is grim trash punk for strong stomachs.
There are some obvious forerunners to this glorious racket. John Spencer Blues Explosion, Pixies, Six By Seven, Sonic Youth, The Stooges, Ten Benson, Sleater Kinney, early Nirvana, The Melvins and Mclusky, to name a few, should form a fairly bloody accurate photo-fit in your mind’s eye. Only with worse teeth. And messier eyebrows. But this Manchester trio (signed to Guy and Mark Elbow and Pete I Am Kloot’s label) do such an inspiring job of keeping the intensity burdened up to the point of overloading that its influences never seem the immediate concern, you’re too wrapped up dealing with the extremity and deep-veined passion of it all.
Being a 1-boy/2-girl outfit occasionally does wonders for their dynamic. On top of the typical throaty hubris shown on ‘Sister Love’ and ‘Rio Grande’ (something like Jon Spencer fed into heavy duty machinery by DFA1979), the chunky bluster on ‘I Found Out’ is augmented strikingly by the sharp bitter-sweetness of female vocals. They add a whole new direction and gusto to the strop being thrown. It is more meticulous and calculated, and soaked to the scuffed hilt in pheromones. That they don’t utilize that weapon more often is the only real complaint. But when you’ve got a song with a title as fabulous and a sound as grating as Primus gargling bricks, as they have on ‘Hellzapoppin!’, any complaint is really immaterial.