Labels: Southern Lord
Review by: Alex Deller
In a just and good world, response to news of a Loincloth LP would be as such:
“Oh, isn’t that the band that those Confessor guys are in? I should check that out!”
Or, maybe:
“Oh, isn’t that the band that Pen Rollings used to be in? I should check that out!”
Or even:
“Oh, isn’t that the band that had that 7″ out on Southern Lord about a hundred years ago? I should check that out!”
Unfortunately this is not the case, because people, on the whole, are pretty thick. Instead, this one is likely to pass everyone by, bar a handful of idiots (see: Kunal, me) with a shady taste in music who no-one really listens to or pays much heed.
Granted, “Iron Balls Of Steel’ is not a good album title. It is not a one that would shriek to you from the racks and beg you to slide it forth and crinkle your money into the hand of whoever’s behind the record store counter. It is, frankly, daft as a brush and you might be forgiven for thinking that they do not take their craft entirely seriously. You would be wrong. Very wrong indeed.
Because Loincloth are an instrumental heavy metal band, and a good one at that. You’d like to think so, really, given the fact that members seem quite happy to drive hundreds of miles every few weeks or so in order to hone 30 seconds worth of music so that it may better fit alongside another 30 seconds worth of music that was similarly laboured over. That’s dedication, right there. Pig-headed, slightly silly, obsessive-compulsive determination, to be sure, but determination nonetheless.
“Iron Balls Of Steel’, see, is a marvelous thing. It is difficult, abstruse and hard to get to grips with, vengefully complicated and tending to treat listeners much the same way a bitter, unbroken horse might treat a novice rodeo rider. Stick with it, though, and those repeated clobberings begin to become worthwhile. You can appreciate each gleaming riff as it interlocks with the next, like the shiny brushed chrome guts of some fabulous and immense machine whose workings you cannot fathom and whose construction is a strange, fog-shrouded mystery.
You will listen and you will be amazed as you bang thy head. Because their metal is good and it is strong and after a while you will only be able to lie there as it swamps effortlessly over you, all parties cackling madly as the crushing is done.