“Your majesty is like a river of bat’s piss,” remarks John Cleese’s James McNeill Whistler, in a sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Faced with the king’s offended reaction, the quotation is attributed to George Bernard Shaw, played by Michael Palin. “I merely meant, Your Majesty,” Shaw recovers with elegant linguistic dexterity, “that your majesty shines out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark.”
There’s not a lot of gilt edge in Batpiss’s debut album, Nuclear Winter. In fact, as the title suggests, it’s more lingering radioactive destruction than precious metal beauty. And therein lies the attraction. Seed kicks off the album with a violent sonic blow, Drag Your Body lurches through the sludgy territory west of The Stabs; you can take a guess at what Come Here And Fuck Off is all about, and you’d be right. Deal with it. Burn Below does you slowly, a murderously potent guitar riff that sidles up to you like Michael Madsen in Reservoir Dogs, and engages in sonic surgery of the most brutal calibre. Hollywood is the pop song of the record, the glamour of celebrity beaten to a pulp by the speedball punk rock of The Germs.
Human is almost anything but; it grinds into your aural consciousness with psychopathic attitude, until there’s nothing left to give; Pig’s Blood offers up animal sacrifice and a haunting sparse sonic backdrop as recovery. Loose Screws starts from the darkest dysfunctional recesses of sociological reasoning, and launches into a dirty rock’n’roll track that’ll fellate you ’til there’s nothing left to give. Couldn’t Get Out is a trip back to the Old Queen’s Arms in Adelaide in the early ’90s, when punk rock was the only way to deal with cultural claustrophobia. Portal tries to find a way to escape, and its hardcore riff could be your only chance of survival.
From there it’s almost seven minutes of Drone, and an exhausted stumble back from the brink of the sonic abyss. You’re battered, bruised and almost beaten – but that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Burn Below
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: SST hardcore, THE STABS, BIRD BLOBS
In A Word: Brutal
