It’s not been long since we last saw Throat, but in the time they’ve been aware there’ve been some surprising changes. True enough, fans of the band’s previous output won’t be disappointed as they still deliver ornery noise-rock by the shovel-load, but the band’s deck of influences has been opened up, plundered and messily reformed to create something startling. Opener ‘Safe Unsound’ sets the tone, providing a simmering, stony-faced dirge that owes a debt to latterday Swans and deals in boiling tension that never quite finds release. Elsewhere ‘No Hard Shoulder’ comes across like Harvey Milk gone Burning Airlines and ‘Recut’ hammers out a Quicksand-worshipping riff that leaves itself gruntingly unfulfilled. Side B opens with some more Swans homage (this time circa ‘The Great Annihilator’) and closes with ‘Maritime’, a weird, feisty, fiery number that divides its time between krautrock and cock rock. Each song stands alone as a miniature triumph, but it’s together that they work wonders, coagulating to form a grotesque, leering, difficult slice of rock music that’s up there with the year’s very best.
