Epic First Album may be Doomed Now
I think anyone whose MySpace message begins with: “HELLO! We're on tour somewhere in the world right now, please leave a message and we'll get back to you after the BEEP” deserves some respect. It says everything you need to know about this band • they just don’t give a…
Not that that in itself is a bad thing. You have to wait and hear the music for that. I was so psyched for this album • everything about it looked and promised originality. Well, I suppose I wasn’t disappointed on that count. Psych-punk Alice-Cooper-in-a-rave titles such as Battle Royale, Dawn of the Dead, Doomed Now, and (my personal favourite) Attack of the 60ft Lesbian Octopus ensure that originality isn’t the issue here. And neither is confidence and an ability to take the piss (Guess where Epic Last Song is on the album…).
This album reminds me of a really disastrous club night out. Imagine being in a club you don’t like, having drunk too much, the promoters had pushed too many people in, and you’re at the stage where all the songs melded into one long and loud buzz. In other words, you’d rather crawl through peoples’ legs along a dubiously sticky floor to get out of there. So maybe this would work in that situation. But other than that, I’m not going to bring home an irritatingly repetitive, buzzy-voiced, album of electro unless I was still drunk at the time. There a couple of standout tracks, the optimistically titled We Are Rockstars, which is probably why it was the single. The other is the previously mentioned Attack… and, frankly, with a title like that and sound effects like a sixties sci-fi epic, who wouldn’t want to listen to it? But it’s not enough to save a whole album.
Apparently, according to the promo team at the Rough Trade album launch, this is the loudest album ever. Hmmm, maybe it’s all a cunning plan to ensure that no one actually listens to it.
You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into… actually, you’re right there. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have bothered.