Reviewers are a bunch of cunts. Mostly, they listen to the first ten seconds of each song of your precious, finely crafted album and give it a mark out of ten based on a few bars of music. Then the CD is discarded or flogged to a second hand shop for 20p. Luckily, I listened to this EP by Underground Operations’ Kathleen Turner Overdrive (a lot of UO releases this month!) a couple of times right through before even thinking about what to say about it. And I’m glad I did.
The first listen, I didn’t get it. It’s like Botch, but with no riffs, thought I, stroking my chin in a peverse, slightly pretentious way. But, actually, it’s really atmospheric hardcore/metal and it’s good. We aren’t talking the trendy sounding stuff at the moment particularly. We are talking proper metal fans playing some downtuned stuff. Yes, in places it’s just a noise. Yes, they aren’t the best band doing this in the world. But this is nice and raw. Reminds me of early Johnny Truant. And that is no bad thing now, is it?
So, there you go. A proper, reasoned review. Of music for people who like proper music.
Mike