Vice February Reviews

Here they are:

Vice February Reviews

Family Battle Snake
Sweet Mine Of Child
FBS Recordings

8 Yet another in the seemingly endless slew of releases from the warped mind of young Bill Kouligas. This one is on 3” CDR so I imagine that if you popped it into your laptop by mistake it would probably end up creating a similar noise as it slowly destroyed both itself and your computer to the sound that comes out of the speakers when you actually play it on a regular CD player.

Excepter
Debt Dept
Paw Tracks

8 There seems to be some overarching theme here involving the affects of the economy on the individual. Or maybe that’s just a facile reading and I’ve got it all wrong? Regardless, Excepter still sound like two bands attempting to play each others set lists and then falling out before making up and hugging it on out.

Fight
Eugene S. Robinson
Hydra Head

5 Eugene likes fighting. He likes fighting so much that he has made a career out of telling people how much he likes fighting. He sung about it in his band Oxbow, he wrote about it for us in the ‘Vice Guide To Getting Beaten Up’ and if you ever run into him it’s a pretty safe bet he’ll either fight you or talk to you about fighting. The problem with this release is that hearing Eugene talk about fighting and nothing else for a whole disc gets really tiring. Almost physically exhausting. Then you realize that there is a whole other disc left to go and you decide to go out and buy a new belt that fits that belt buckle you’ve had knocking around your room for so long.

Digital Penetration Vol.2
alt < delete Recordings

8 alt < delete reminds me of Kitsune without the money. But with the one thing that all of Kitsune’s money can no longer buy: taste.

Destroyer
Trouble In Dreams
Rough Trade

9 Yank indie-pop has to hit saturation point soon. You can’t move for being swamped by Band of Wolf Parading Decemberist Rubdowns at every turn. It’s getting silly. I might drown in approaching middle-age melancholia at any minute. Then once in a while something like the Silver Jews record or this new one from Bejar comes along and it all makes perfect sense again.

Evangelista
Hello, Voyager
Constellation

8 This sounds like Patti Smith covering the whole of Swordfishtrombones. Sound scary? Now imagine that with added disjointed strings and wanton static bursts courtesy of Thee Silver Mt Zion Orchestra. Not for moments of mental fragility. Like Sunday evenings after you haven’t slept for two days. I won’t be trying that one again soon.

P.W. Long
God Bless The Drunkards Dog
Southern

10 This is so all-American that it should replace Springsteen in the hard drinking, late nights, early mornings filled with work and blood red steaks for dinner washed down with 6 pint pitchers bracket of the bar room sing-along cannon. Except that P.W. is the real deal. And having the real deal stare you in the face every day is far scarier than having a walking Gap advert greet you from the bottom of the jukebox.

The Sword
Gods Of Earth
Kemado

4 If you took High On Fire, subtracted the intelligence (which, lets face it, was at Fred Flintsone levels anyway) and blew the whole thing up the arse with a bicycle pump full of over-the-top gas then you would end up with The Sword. Kind of like a pompous riff-metal balloon animal: amazing fun for the first 30 seconds but soon boring as hell and waiting to pop.

Geoffrey Oi!Cott
The Good, The Bad & The Googly
X Fist/Boss Tuneage

10 This a cricket themed Oi record by a band called Geoffrey Oi!Cott entitled “The Good, The Bad & The Googly”, performed by guys with names like W.G. Disgrace and featuring songs with titles such as “Dart’s Player’s Wives”. Which part of all this is not screaming “10/10” at you yet?

Rod Modell
Incense & Blacklight
Plop

8 Miss all of last years hyper-limited Echospace 12”s but still want to listen to something that makes you fell like your trapped inside of an iceberg while old transistor radios hum and clunk somewhere in the near distance? All is well in the world for you then as Rod Modell has decided to release a CD that won’t disappear within five minutes of its onsale date.