To be honest, I wasn’t 100% sold on the Church Whip 12″. Call me fusty, but I kinda thought that if you had the brass neck to call your record ‘Psychedelic Nightmare’ then you should make sure it was pretty darn nightmarish and pretty darn psychedelic. It could have been a wonderful horror, but while the idea was exciting the reality was rather a disappointment. This EP is a more satisfying affair, the different elements meshing together far more coherently and less capable of being picked out and identified in isolation. After a Typical Eighties Thrash Intro (i.e. quiet picking smeared with electrified, melodious noodling) things slop forth in manic fashion, the band’s sound a turbulent mix of feral GISM/Zouo appreciation and the scummier end of 80s metal (think: Sodom, Sarcófago and the point at which Hellhamer became Celtic Frost). Protean riffs, echoey vocals and whammy bar dives careen amidst breakneck riffs, and while I think these guys are probably a bit too proficient on their instruments to capture the chaotic madness of their influences it’s delivered with enough aplomb to have received reasonably steady attention since dropping like a charred bat on my doorstep.
