Exclusive: Hear the 1-2-punch of new Mums singles ‘At All Times’ and ‘Bellow Out’
Words: Andy Hughes(Photo Credit: Mike Warburton)
As we reach the vinegar strokes of yet another year, for a good portion of the music world, anything considered worthy of an end of year list placement generally has to be released between January and November. This means that more often than not, the poor sods releasing music in December are left out in the cold. From experience, we’ve often…
Words: Ben Forrester
Mums – Legs(Society Of Losers / Hex Records)
It’s been seven long years since Mums released their debut ‘Land Of Giants’ and in that time, they’ve got a new drummer, two thirds of the band got married and one third of the band actually became a Mum!! So with life seemingly heading in the right direction, the trio are ready to explode back into our ears with their long…
America. The Big Apple. Sweet Lady Gumbo. Old… Swampy. Home of gigantic portions and gigantic hospital bills, it still remains the nut to crack for UK bands.
Having had a prior tour of the states cancelled due to the pandemic, USA Nails were raring to go for a run of dates this month just gone. We got a little bit worked up ourselves (from home) and asked the band to document their trip.…
Various Artists - “Hex Records 10 Year Comp.” Welp, it’s been eight years since this 10 year anniversary compilation was released, but no matter, Hex Records is still going strong, and I enjoyed revisiting this label run-through last night. Featuring a string of catalog highlights and otherwise unreleased material, Hex’s affinity for off-kilter metallic hardcore is without fault. Ed Gein, Achilles, The Helm, Playing Enemy, Cursed, Engineer, and The National Acrobat, all bring the loud, tottering chaos. Melodic post-hardcore flexes a muscle on material from Sparks Lights The Friction and the supremely underrated Prize Country. The Bandcamp listing notes a short zine that went along with this when it was released, I think I gotta track that down.
Gaytheist — How Long Have I Been on Fire? (Hex Records)
GAYTHEIST, "How Long Have I Been On Fire?" by Gaytheist
Depending on your tolerance for puns, Gaytheist may have one of the best names in contemporary heavy rock, or one of the most annoying. Many of their song titles walk a similar line between what’s funny and what’s cloyingly ironic. Their last record, Let’s Jam Again Soon (2017), offered arch fare like “Avenged Seven-minute Abs,” “Let’s Get Astrophysical” and “sCraps.” If wordplay and postmodern meta- maneuvers were all the band had to offer, this reviewer would be inclined to take a pass. But Gaytheist has always provided substance that operates in excess of the snarky surfaces. The band integrates melodically inclined noise rock (think Betty-period Helmet), sludgy grunge and the occasional measure of spiky post-punk into exciting, mostly uptempo musical forms. And the jokey stuff? Sometimes it’s not just silly.
In some ways, the band’s name isn’t a pun at all: Jason Rivera, who sings and plays guitar, is indeed a gay atheist. The songs deliver on the political bent you might expect, though always with the imprint of Rivera’s queer sensibility. “It’s Reigning Men” alludes to the Weather Girls’ song, long an anthem at gay clubs. But Gaytheist’s tune reconfigures the sort of “reign” those men exert over the others in their midst. Rivera sings, “I must have control / Over your body / I am a man after all.” Gaytheist’s song doesn’t celebrate sexual freedom, it satirizes sexual oppression — of women, for sure, but also of queer folks and of sexual pleasures that move outside of spaces and practices policed by traditional. “Border Patrol” invokes rightwing xenophobia as a metaphor for other sorts of border crossings. Rivera yells, “Get in here by any means / Cuz I’m right here on my fucking knees / Get in here illegally / I have so much to show you.” It’s an invitation, summoning the repressed libidinal longings that drive so much hatred of queer sexualities. At the end of each line, the rest of the band shouts “Fuck yeah!” in hyper-masculine chorus. It sounds like a song from the Fluid’s Roadmouth (1989), but it repurposes the macho swagger of grunge into queer affirmation.
The clash of surface values and manifest affect reaches a climax with the album’s closing track, “Doing Great! Never Better!” The title sounds like a worrisome answer to someone’s idle question: “How you doing?” The hyperbole verges on nervy, jittery overcompensation. Anyone hearing such a response would see through it. And the song itself doesn’t attempt any ironies. Rivera sings, “Please don’t go, don’t leave me here / I ain’t got nobody else.” His bandmates Nickolis Parks and Timothy Hoff thump and crunch away under mammoth power chords, like Skinyard covering Cheap Trick’s At Budokan. Just when you think the song can’t get any bigger or more fulsome with pathos, it lurches into a lower gear. Its last minute is a thunderous dirge, Rivera and crew shouting, “Don’t goooooooooo! / Don’t goooooooooo!” No cleverness, no games. Just urgent plea. One wonders what a more emotionally direct collection of songs from Gaytheist might sound like. For now, this record works hard to balance the band’s tendency toward smart-assery with sharp notes of humanity. It works pretty well.
Album Review: USA Nails - Life Cinema (Various Labels)
Album Review: USA Nails – Life Cinema (Various Labels)
London based USA Nails release their fourth album “Life Cinema” on May 10 2019 through Dipped In Gold Records (UK), Bigout Records (France), and Hex Records (USA).
In the past year, USA Nails have toured the USA and Europe, played Best Kept Secret Festival [NL], Label Mates [UK] and La Ferme Electrique [FR], shared stages with the likes of Viagra Boys, Cocaine Piss, and Unsane, and recorded a…
USA Nails x Dipped In Gold - Listen to 'Smile' from their forthcoming LP 'Life Cinema'
USA Nails x Dipped In Gold – Listen to ‘Smile’ from their forthcoming LP ‘Life Cinema’
If there’s two things you can depend on in this game, it’s an email from Paul Riddlesworth making you smile and new material from USA Nails getting you excited.
When the Too Pure Singles Club shut its doors a few years back, we were positively wounded. From the ashes though comes Dipped In Gold Recordings and having already put out the latest Mush record,they’re now set to release the…
