Todd - Big Ripper - CD (2009)

Labels: Riot Season
Review by: David Giles

Todd play raw, disjointed noise rock that, I think, its fair to compare to Karp, although the recording is much rawer. I admit that on first listen I wasn’t over the moon about this. I remember thinking that there were a few storming tracks (the sludgy “˜Walnut And Leather’ in particular) but that quite of a lot of the others fell pretty flat. I’ve listened through a good few times now and I’ve changed my mind to a pretty large extent. Not every track is spot-on, sure, but the album’s lows are fewer and less severe than I had initially thought. I do still have my reservations about the atonal plucking, “˜solos’ and less aggressive passages scattered around. When they’re battering right into a song and there is a huge wall of noise, it really works, and I didn’t enjoy anything interrupting that too much. This is rad, though, and anyone into noise-rock should be all over it. Good stuff!