Crash Street Kids: Sweet Creatures
This album is a rock opera, and like all good rock operas (Phantom Of The Paradise! Maggots: The Record! Erm… that King Diamond thing!), it requires costume changes. Not just by the band, but the audience, as well. A grubby pair of blue jeans will do OK for the set-up: glammy, punky, hooker-rock jams like Bang! Bang! (You’re Beautiful) and Bad! Yeah, Bad! (this record also requires a lot of exclamation points), but by the time we’re deep into the right side of the gatefold (if this CD was a record, it’d be double-vinyl, believe it), and suddenly the Kids are the Ramones-trying-to-be-Meatloaf, then some kind of purple-coloured fur and pastel socks are definitely in order. I have no idea what any of this is about – whores, certainly, and maybe motorcycles and hard drugs? But it’s a sweet and greasy ride through delightfully overblown 70s punk and 80s glam-stravagance. Basically, Pinball Wizard but on a Pac-Man budget. (7⁄10)
The Pussydogs: Ain’t Nothin’ But A Pussydog
Debut EP from a trio of snotty high-school zeros from Nowheresburg, USA. They sound like the developmentally disabled sons of the Stooges raised on a diet of Black Flag (before they sold out) and the Dwarves (after they sold out). The songs are all a minute long, because that’s all you could stand. My new favourite band. (6⁄10)
Glitter Wizard: Solar Hits
From San Francisco by way of an acid-fried renaissance faire, GW take an unhealthy preoccupation with role-playing games and arts and crafts projects and mould it all into one of the most over-the-top 70s freak-rock homages since BOC almost killed their audience with lasers. I’m talkin’ Grand Funk level machismo and ’76 Sabbath-era excess, only with flutes and naked dancing girls. Minds = blown. (7⁄10)
Wizard’s Beard: Pure Filth
On the other end of the Wizard-rock spectrum, we’ve got these doomy loons. They sound like St Vitus collectively vomiting Technicolor buckets of whisky, bile, plasters and blood. It’s an unholy and altogether anti-social ear-mangling of gloomy, sleazeball dope-sludge, and yet, you could pretty easily fuck to it. How is that possible? Sorcery, quite clearly. (6⁄10)
Various Artists: Triple Threat Of Terror
This is a three-way split from a cabal of US horror-punk outfits. You’ve got Creepersin, who sound like the Supersuckers with maggots in their eyes; Others, who do the campy skull-metal routine; and the champs of this dark hour, Die Monster Die, who basically sound like Type O Negative jamming with the Bay City Rollers. Now that’s fuckin’ fiendish. (6⁄10)
