Panther - 14 Kt. God
‘14 Kt. God’ is a prime example of what will happen to you if you settle for second best. It is a towering bastion of bad production; ‘Panther’ could have a really nice sound, but the vocals have been shoved into the background and the bass is non-existent on half the tracks, and too apparent on the others • e.g. ‘on the lam’. They seem to have been compiled from elements from different bands that worked well; the resulting amalgamation however does not. It’s rhythmically sound and there are occasionally sections where you can relax and think; ‘this is going well’ for a few brief moments before it collapses to the ground again.
Scarily when I got my copy it looked like someone had taken a saw to one edge of the case, ripping through a centimetre of plastic and CD artwork. Fortunately (or unfortunately, I favour the latter) they hadn’t managed to make it to the disk. The artwork itself also deserves comment; It seems to have been designed by a Fauvist years behind his time and a serial killer writing in blood. It is ugly, and fails to grab the attention or please the eye. On the other hand, it does somewhat fit the music.
On the whole it is difficult to see where Panther are coming from, and exactly where they expect to be going. Listen to the scat singing on ‘Puerto Rican jukebox’ and you can’t help but think ‘What was that? Who do they think they’re appealing to?’ It’s not the normal crowd for sure, perhaps some strange crowd of middle-aged freaks that only come out at night to feast on the blood of the living and listen to experimental music.
You don’t really want to hear the rubbishness of their noise, but take a look at the track titles and you might begin to understand; ‘Her past are the trees’, ‘Decision, Decision’, ‘Total sexy church’? These are not the hallmarks of yr average drug fiend. No, this is simply what happens if you can’t even be arsed to talk proper. And if your sole gimmick is the fact that you are lazy swine who cannot be bothered to employ a proof reader/producer/artwork designer etc, then you frankly deserve to be shot in the foot: Which is just what Panther have done to themselves with ‘14 Kt God’.