With heatwaves and wildfires ablaze globally, there could hardly be a more prescient title or dystopian theme by the London prog-rock-jazz experimentalists, whose third LP is strangely among their more accessible, awash as it is with lightning riffs and stop-start energy of King Crimson, Frank Zappa or even Buckethead proportions. Whether they are Marmite band, delicious to some or indigestible to others, Geordie Greep, Cameron Picton, and Morgan Simpson’s musicianship remains undeniably breathtaking, but from the breathless riffs and drumming of Sugar/Tz, previous Song of the Day the war-themed Welcome to Hell narrated by a nightmare platoon leader, or the Flamenco rhythms and indie acoustic of Eat Men Eat. Greep’s vocals only seem to increase in manic spoken delivery, while on later tracks such as The Defence or 27 Questions, he reaches a crooner level that has Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra stylings in this crazed commentary of a disaster-filled future.
It’s hard to beat the frenetic energy or oddness of The Race Is About to Begin, introduced by the voice of a radio announcer as “a song like no other” and nor indeed it is, unless it’s something else by black midi, one in which Greep says there’s “no end to this nothing nonsense non-song”.
Overall it’s a wonderfully nightmarish musical to Armageddon with a drunken Kurt Weill twist, featuring an absurd boxing match in set in the year 2163, a song about a brothel visit, characters such as Tristan Bongo and Mrs Gonorrhoea, a contract killing, and a dying actor called Freddie Frost who at close of the album on 27 Questions delivers his finally monologue before exploding live on stage, As ever, brilliantly bonkers and mind-bendingly original. Out on Rough Trade.
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