Undead Apes’ evolutionary path isn’t hard to identify – it starts in the New York borough of Queens in the mid 1970s when The Ramones sped their way into rock ‘n’ roll significance
It’s genuinely bizarre that pockets of humanity – coincidentally, most of which seem to be based in regional pockets of southern United States – who continue to describe Charles Darwin’s scientifically demonstrated theory of evolution as, well, just a theory. In the same way the average Collingwood supporter can construct two hands in the middle of the back as a fair and honest tackle, creationists can challenge irrefutable scientific fact with religious rhetoric and a bad case of philosophical myopia.
Undead Apes’ evolutionary path isn’t hard to identify – it starts in the New York borough of Queens in the mid 1970s when The Ramones sped their way into rock ‘n’ roll significance, winds through Manchester a few years later to share a few ales with The Buzzcocks, and spends a few nights on the couches of a squalid inner-city Adelaide sharehouse in the mid 1980s occupied by the Exploding White Mice. Grave Consequences is Undead Apes’ debut record – released by increasingly legendary Brisbane label Mere Noise on beautiful 180g vinyl – and it’s little short of perfect primitive dumb rock.
The critical elements are all there in spades – eight cylinder-strength guitars, rock solid drums, choicely administered dashes of fuzz, a box full of simple melodies and lyrical topics (brain eating, lobotomies, taxation, extra-sensory perception, romance and hypothermia) that walk the line between social observation and juvenile humour.
The highlights come thick, fast and seamless – Eat Yr Brain kicks the record off with the power of a hotted up street car, Everyday is a love song that blends the indulgence of Dinosaur Jr and the pace of The Meanies and Taxes is the unimpeachable political diatribe The Clash spent their career striving for.
ESP is pop punk crafted so beautifully it’d send Jean-Paul Gautier into paroxysms of admiration, Brain Sell sits happily at the dumb end of romantic interest with spiritual guidance from Dee Dee Ramone and Jason must surely be the ultimate tribute to a generation of dysfunctional kids born in the 1970s.
There’s nothing particularly new in the Undead Apes formula – as a scientific paper, it’s all been said before, and it wouldn’t even get past the first post in the arduous journey for a research grant – and within that well-trodden style lies Undead Apes’ undeniable appeal. Go on, eat your brain.
Out Now on Mere Noise
BY BOB MASSIE
