Labels: RobotRadio Records
Review by: Graeme Cunningham
Dead Elephant. That’s a gooood name. Has all sorts of connotations, weight, decay, bad luck, anti-republican bumper stickers… Very fitting as it turns out. These Italian’s are making noisy heavy music, of the non-metal variety. It’s in the ball park of things like noxgat and Unsane at some points, then at others its much more restrained. Variety, yes that’s the word needed here. They keep throwing in unexpected twists, like when the saxophone comes in all skronky on track three, parping it up a storm. Track four (Black Coffee Breakfast) has a wicked spiralling guitar riff and some sickeningly slinky bass which kicks my arse up and down the sitting room for a solid three and a half minutes before someone spikes their drink with ketamine and it all goes a bit tits up careering into some sort of epic space drone/bad trip which take the track past the ten minute mark.
After that staggering peak, the second half of the CD seems to a little restrained in comparison. It’s a little less action packed, all the faster stuff seems to have been pushed to the front. Abyss Heart is seven and a half minutes of nothing much at all. The first four tracks are great though. Really promising and I could see this band having much better work to come (and kicking out a serious racket in the live arena). Also worth a mention is the nicely disturbing Charles Burns esque artwork and the nicely put together digi-pack, which seems to be a feature of all Robot Radio’s Releases.