Labels: self released
Review by: Alex Hannan
I have a recurring mental image of a garage-punk band breaking into Ride’s practice space, nicking all their effects pedals and covering My War… “Noro”, GUILTY PARENTS’ third release, features riff shapes and chord choices that come from somewhere a few degrees sludgier than on “SlimeWave”, their previous outing. The opening of “Head/Basket/Dance/Casket” roughs up the iconic riff to BLACK SABBATH’s “Black Sabbath”, and the tritone interval which gives that SABBATH riff its distinctive sound returns at the opening of both “Heatsick” and “Whistle and I’ll come to you…..” also. They didn’t call that particular dissonance “diabolus in musica” in the classical era for nothing, and it signals a slight shift away from the more identifiably garagey end of the band’s earlier sound towards their uglier mid-paced hardcore tendencies.
The effects-heavy instrumental work gives a slurred feel to proceedings, at certain points blurring the coordination of the instruments into a bilious lava flow. The vocals are clearer and more upfront than previously, and the singer’s Americanisms come into sharper view – my only real quibble. Third track “Heatsick” negotiates an effective contrast of textures, breaking down and building up again from a simple, nagging bassline through an echo chamber of scrapes and shivers to a full-on guitar attack. The tape glides out serenely with a deconstructed remix of a track from SlimeWave at the end which chops up the vocals and submerges them in gently lapping pools of reverb and fuzz.