Labels: alternative tentacles
Review by: Alex Deller
Having read their ludicrously patronising promo sheet (whereby they explain that once there was more to punk than Good Charlotte “” thanks chaps!) I figured I had the Fleshies pegged as another punch drunk garage punk band. “The Scicilian” starts by fitting snugly with my prejudices, sounding like a bunch of scumbags tipping their greasy caps to the Stooges and AC/DC, before changing tack and lurching into some Melvins-y crooning and mangled AmRep-style guitar skronk. This is largely how the album progresses, weaving between scuzzy three-chord punk and weirder noise rock efforts recalling the dissonant, screeched misdeeds of bands like the Jesus Lizard. Decent enough, rocking moderately and infinitely preferable to any number of smug fops raiding the past for today’s radio hits, but crucially lacking the sense of danger I’d really like to be feeling from this record. Never do the sounds fizzing from the speakers suggest a blind hatred that may drunkenly beat to you death with a chair leg, nor the uneasy notion that you may wake up to find David Yow leering over you with his dirty penis resting on your chin. Strange as this may sound, when rocking to this type of music such uncomfortable reactions are a bonus, and while the Fleshies can roll with the punches, their rock is far too polite to deliver any fatal blows itself.