8. Mouthus - The Long Salt [Important]

disclaimer: not sure if I will be able to do no's 7 and 6 this weekend. Things are keeping me busy and I need to finish a Paul Flaherty article. Sorry fellow Bonanza cats

Coasting through the Oh Six there were some records that kept me company during pretty much the whole ride. They kept on fascinating me, thrilling me. Causing my goosebumps to headbang everytime I put them on. One of those was this album by NYC testicle shredders Mouthus. Opening with one of the best openers of the year, 'Trains Again', is a Butthole Surfers' fantasy buried beneath a mudslide. A churning lo-fi groove filled with decaying guitars and filthy vocal overdubs that sound like someone buried alive. Lots of spooky energy. The first time I heard this I thought something was trying to tell me to come pick It up from a place deep down. How deep? I still don't know, I didn't have the guts to look for It. But since that moment It won't leave me alone. Sighing and screaming endlessly behind a curtain of ashy fog.

Mouthus are No Wave gone wrong but they twist it so hard it becomes soothing in a way. They ornate the spiky mess No Wave largely was with sheets of curved guitar sounds, pummeling drums that feel like a Fela Kuti track spun backwards, often in slowmotion. 'What Knife Say' thumps like a mean Einstürzende Neubauten remix, dense sludge guitars rocking out at a snail's tempo, splashing cymbal crashes and vocals that approach strange forms of chanting, the chants of dead people perhaps. Maybe that's why The Long Salt feels so invigorating, it's built up from the energy of countless deceased lives strung into one bad mamma jamma, a deluded Loveless for dead people. That's what it is.