Better Than Nevermind - No. 11 : Unsane - Unsane

Unsane – Unsane (Matador)

 

Nobody wanted this album. The sleeve itself was a repulsive for most except crazy me. I bought this album because of the name of the band and I wanted to know what kind of music such weirdoes would make and I wasn’t disappointed… The album starts with Organ Donor, tribal drumming, unintelligible vocals and noisy guitar works on a driving bass. The drums are stellar, relentless, suffocating and hammer the rhythm like a drunk madman angry at bunch of nails. It segues right into Bath, slower but sturdier, with solos of feedback alternating with the riffs, the drumsticks are flying all over the place while the bass drum stays as steady as an evil jackhammer, and the sound finishes with a wind of feedback imitating the voice. Maggot begin with white noise, but the trio cuts it short with a voodoobilly of bent chords and pumping bass. It takes a while before the vocals kick in: I told you/It don’t mean a thing/Do what you’re told. Distorted shouting and shredding riffs form a hypnotic pattern which lingers until the fade out. Cracked Up and Slag offer more of the same, but at greater speed, especially the former, the drummer Charlie Ondras flailing around as if trying to kill a thousand bees at the same time, and the latter has the bass and guitar so distorted it is as if the musicians are playing with brass knuckles on burning sheet metal. Side 1 ends with Exterminator, a slow dirge with meandering moray eels of wah-wah pedal feedback hovering around syncopated beats that hiccup from time to time. The dirge becomes an orgy of feedback and distortion, the only constant being the low bass until the song restarts and repeats the pattern without vocals, the whole mess melting like a rotted core emitting the background radiation of a nuclear meltdown. The first track of side 2 is a masterpiece of noise rock, Vandal-X has the furious drumming, garbled lyrics (except maybe for Shut up/Fuck you), throbbing bass, incisive guitar riffs, the perfect soundtrack for an evisceration with a rusted knife. HLL starts with a cloud of fuzz that explodes in a shitstorm of riffs like a runaway train always on the verge of derailing until someone pulls the plug, literally (I thought the vinyl had stopped). Cut and Action Man sound almost normal, especially the latter, but the vocals are still sounding as if Chris Spencer is having his nails pulled out. Pete Shore’s bass is so distorted and low it manages to come close to numbing all feelings in my brain. With White Hand, the trio closes with a hypnotic ballet of ringing guitars, like alarms blaring the end of the descent into chaos, the bass and the vocals sometimes indistinct of each other. Unsane indeed…