Labels: Iron Lung
Review by: Alex Deller
You would expect a record with such an ugly, mean-looking clown on the front cover to be an unpleasant record and you would be right to expect such a thing. Look at him. Just look at him. He is not smiling – that is pain contorting his face. Deep-rooted pain that stretches out into infinity. His eyes are voids. Like slashes filled with black glass. And his make-up has been heedlessly trowelled on, as though to quickly cover cracks in a crumbling wall. He is a grinning horror with spite gnawing away at his putrid, roiling guts.
Gag sound like what the clown man feels inside. A simple, pounding sense of hate that’s jagged, erratic and confused. Riven with uncertainty. Maniacally gnashing, like the yellow teeth of so many rats chewing away at the bile-filled tubes that bubble and slurp inside him.
The only real difference is that Gag’s outburst are succinct. They serve as short, painful outbursts that vanish from earshot almost as suddenly as they arrive. The clown man’s pain, though, is always there. It lingers and lurks and it will be with him forever.