Normans manage a neat sleight of hand: they have a lot going on, but funnel it all into a lean, spare, logical sound that’s all their own. Springy guitars and lewd keyboard squelches combine in ways that are weird and ugly but undeniably compelling, and their swivel-eyed singer sounds ants-in-his-pants jittery and menacingly nonchalant the next. Things are thrash, gouge, scrabble and spume, and on closing track ‘Fury On The Island’ there is also a sickening, sludgy, industrial lurch.
Here are some things that this album made me think at various points:
- A surf-punk Nick Cave;
- A synth-punk Murder City Devils;
- An aggro Talking Heads;
- The Doors, if they listened to New Order;
- A more fun Circus Lupus, if they actually did not entirely hate you;
- A less fun Brainiac, if they actually did kind of hate you.
To be honest, any one of these as a tagline would be enough to sucker me in. Granted, I have specific and peculiar tastes. But maybe you, too, are a fucking weirdo?