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| If you happen to be a legendary American rock producer (you're probably not), then odds are you've already taken a minor-league British rock band under your wing. It seems to be in vogue just now. First Steve Albini inexplicably but excellently decides to nurture the slightly-rubbish wiry Welsh pisstakers Mclusky and transform them into a complex, furious indie-punk rhino in the space of two albums. Meanwhile, the other, other Nirvana producer (Jack Endino) decides that the missing piece of the sludgy Seattle jigsaw bears the shape of messy Oxford metal duo Winnebago Deal. |
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And so now Chris Goss, man-in-the-back-room to Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age, and the majority of their various associated offshoots, shows us what you get when you throw a stoner-rock pioneer in the pot with five psycho-silly-billy hallowe'en punks from Brighton.
It's been clear for a long while that TEMBLD's debut The Horse Of The Dog gave a very narrow glimpse of what the band were all about. The treble heavy tin-can production didn't show a lot of concern for sonic finesse, while the material rarely strayed from their patented mix of gonzo goth-punk thrashing with Guy McKnight's surprisingly effective evil Elvis crooning. At its best ("Morning Has Broken", "Psychosis Safari", "Celebrate Your Mother") it was top-notch cartoon mosh fury, but it was only when you caught the full-on zombie carnage of their live shows that you realised just how serious they were about this whole grave-robbing, corpse-fucking dark knights business.
So the very-delayed (there's already been three singles released off the record) second LP makes sure they get to indulge those tendencies for overblown gothic imagery (see the Lord Of The Rings style ghost horse front cover), and makes the most of Chris Goss's knack with a sinister guitar sound. The emphasis is shifted very much away from the unrestrained chaos of the previous material and much more towards an insistent tone of foreboding and suppression. This is an album so bottled-up it really should be exploding in your face. It never does. For this is an exercise in tempering and channelling aggression into a rage much more controlled and much more deadly. But it's an exercise that's only a partial success.
The problem isn't the material. Though it gets a bit silly in places ("Puppy Dog Snails" is at once excellent and absurd, but on repeated listens the absurdity dominates and begins to stray into the dangerous no-man's-land of novelty), it never rests on its laurels, and is constantly surprising and engaging. And they can all play their instruments properly these days too, which is no bad thing.
No, the problem is that American producer. He's used the band's unusual direction as a springboard for his own production aspirations, and gone all out on indulgence. Every track is carefully treated with effects, albeit expertly, and every song feels like it's been taken to pieces, painted in different colours and put back together again. Goss's attention to detail is so bloody pedantic that the songs aren't allowed to breathe. There's no consistency in sound to the record, and certainly nothing even close to live energy. You really try your best to get excited by it, but there's no better test than to put on a previous record and this one fails. Next to The Royal Society their debut may be limited in scope and in aspirations, but it has an electricity that this album just isn't able to recreate.
The really frustrating thing is that every single song on this record will sound amazing live. Really amazing. |
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| Tom Pegg - 7/10 |
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