Yowzah. Now we here do love our soundz on the rackety and dare we say slightly wayward side which is just as well because things don’t come any more skewed or shambolic as the Beard of Wolves. Last mentioned here when we cast a critical eye over their debuting platter ‘Wet Mouth’ which in turn launched Too Pure’s critically acclaimed but seldom seen in proper promo form seven inch Singles Club (which incidentally is part of the reason why we are holding the review of February’s release to ransom notwithstanding the fact that the sound cloud link was without sound – ye just cannae get the staff these days) and in return got our ears spanked.
Buoyed no doubt by letters of admiration and the foisting of gifts, invitations to celebrity balls and media invites, North Wales favourite upstarts have it seems ducked quickly into their local studios and hammered out an EP worth of teen spirited tearaways led from the fore by ‘My Father Drives The Death Star’. Now not being a Star Wars fan myself, who said it was the most overrated franchise in celluloid history, even I can see the merits of owning your own death star especially when dark thoughts turn to work but then again I always was a sucker for a cloak and a facemask that made you sound like a 60 a day smoking Dalek. That said it becomes a concern when you realise that there are people out there motioning to have their government sanction funds to build a real one – has the world gone mad – do I breathe the same air as these hapless fops – hello its fiction guys the clue being in the description ’Science Fiction’ – and this coming from a nation still having issues with flat pack assembly. Anyway where were we.
Beard of Wolves, new EP lead track as advertised with the title we shall not mention again for fear of going off on one for a second time, clearly these young gentlemen have ongoing unresolved issues and could have pretty much nailed down the most infectious and sexiest thing to hit our hi-fi since Wild Bunch’s ’Danger – High Voltage’ in so far as it rockets along with a seriously dirty discofied underpin all trimmed with falsetto vocals and woozy mirror balls all smoked to Moroder fashioned T-Rexian glam pouting purrs which splinter, fracture and fragment into a glorious schizophrenic slice of raucously unhinged rawk – absolutely deranged and criminally attractive. Elsewhere you get the aforementioned ’Wet Mouth’ which is about – well I’ll leave your imagination to figure that one out – and its attending flip cut ’Dead Heart’ – the former a cold shower necessitating and frantically psychotic slab of humping hormones wired up to the most manic melodic mayhem we’ve heard so far all year while the latter a squalling friction frenzied brute of post punked paranoia. Which leaves new cut ’Date Flight’ to see matters out to the run out grooves amid a volcanic surge of no waved garage growled swamp dragged boogie replete with grizzled snake winding riffage that sounds not unlike a seriously twatted out Sonic Youth. Are these chaps on medication we wonder.
[Rating:4]
Released 18th of March.
