Labels: Crucial Blast
Review by: Kunal Nandi
I could reel off a list as long as your arm of bands that these guys are obviously influenced by. Luckily that’s fine, as all the bands I could care to mention are bona-fide overlooked geniuses. Black Elk bring to mind the heyday of the Amphetamine Reptile label, so I’m talking about the wayward sleaziness of Cows, the terrifying, lo-fi version of Today Is The Day, the wiry, stabbing punk of Hammerhead, and so on and so on and so on. There’s a mighty amount of playfulness at work here, with vital, inventive riffs hammered out left, right and indeed centre. The vocals are great, all werewolf howls and incomprehensible suffering. Almost too much happens within each song, but repeated spins do reveal a method to the madness. These guys and Norway’s Arabrot are among the few bands playing noise-rock this wild at the moment. Notch another hit up for Crucial Blast Records too.