The fine people at single piece slate have struck again, making vinyl records happen lovingly handcrafted in their shop, I imagine like a fine piece of New England furniture, or like a 7" Amish collective, working only in the traditional ways of records, ignoring all technological advances...this time they've cut a split featuring Victory and Associates and Hurry up Shotgun who were nice enough to send 7Inches one of these clear, thick slabs of vinyl.
"Turn Down the Guitars" is the title of the rack from V&A and I know what you're thinking, "But that goes against everything these guys stand for!", and you'd be right, turns out this is a protest song against the sound guy at every venue telling them to turn down the most important element in their arsenal. Hilarious lyrically
he's not horsing around / its a constant standoff / that's the reason this song features the bass / no reverb is needed
but then they composed the track to take it one step further, punching in bursts of guitars over mostly bassline, finishing with some over the top Eddie Van Halen soloing.
What I can appreciate about these guys beyond the punchy power chords, and frontman Conan Neutron's (name, perfect) attitude, is that they're going for broke every time, like Hot Snakes, that massive post-punk energy - the all out party time rock, loud as hell...obviously that's why they run into trouble with the man trying to bring them down! At the risk of alienating future venues they want you to know they want to rock god dammit! Any band would appreciate this, and should be covered on personal mix tapes and passed around back stage at Bannaroo.
The Hurry Up, Shotgun track "Paths" is dishing out an aural beating of funk-punk, a mix of complex repeated guitar melodies, that progressive bassline and interlockign percussion all off on it's own...which right away takes me back to the days when I still respected Red Hot Chili Peppers and their combination of styles I hadn't ever come across before. Borrowing across genre's, taking their own idiosyncratic parts from everything. I guess you could even go further back with combination's that Fishbone or Bad Brains pioneered. The energy is similar, and you can hear the decades of rock that came before it in the changes. They don't ever let up with this completely bizarre core rhythm and frantic, almost metal vibrato vocals. It all comes down into a slow melodic power drone to take the track out on the metal side of things. These two have played together on local bills and this split single brings both of their comparably intense performance styles in friendly competition with each other.
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