If anyone promised you something that would best be described as ‘Sonic Youth meets Slayer’, would you be interested? I know I was when they offered me this album. But of course, a promise is one thing; making it work is something quite different. So can they cut it? I can’t give a conclusive answer, really. The album starts off very promisingly, exactly how you would expect Sonic Youth to sound if they’d turn up their amps and switched from Jaguars to Dean guitars. But what happens next is a bit worrying. After a few minutes you start to realise that you’re not listening to a grand intro, but an instrumental song. (I tend to never read the info sheet before listening to the album at least once, hence my surprise) In fact, the entire album is instrumental, and that usually pushes some bad buttons with me. The thing is, and I’ve said it before, that when you play only instrumental you tend to emphasize it too much. I know you’re thinking: what the fuck do you mean; if you leave out the lyrics there is nothing left but the music, is there? And you’re right. However, I’ve noticed that fully instrumental bands – not others playing an occasional instrumental song - very often grow to keep themselves busy with ‘instrumental lyrics’, meaning endless solos.

And double solos of course, because you’re a unit and you can interact, so why not play the solo together? Once they’re at that level, I quit. However things are not all that bad in this case. They just slip into that habit every now and then, and those are the less good bits. The majority is good though, making up the promise. Once you get used to the somewhat original sound – the guitar is usually the most normal sounding, the bass has a really metal-like hollow slapping sound and the drums are the opposite (not metal-tight but with some kind small-room reverb) to top things off – you can start to discover the good points, such as the original compositions, real Sonic type stuff. And to show that genres are only labels (these guys can easily be put into a new genre for that matter) the music seamlessly blends from one sound into the other, which is the cause of some more surprises. Don’t be surprised when you think you’re listening to one of these songs and then after awhile you realise that you’re suddenly listening to stoner music, but not really in such a way that you can put your finger on the exact moment that it happens. Interesting stuff to say the least.