The Agenda

reviewed by Jolly

Coughs Secret Passage (Load Records)

The closest band to compare Coughs to would have to be a Swans / Butthole Surfers choice blend — mustardy relish on top of an atomic crashing corndog bomb of discontent. This six-piece wrecking crew fronted by Anya is an atomic bomb; she has a voice like a possessed saxophone being strangled in the best way, and some of their songs are about popping pimples, and bunnies running down the slope to keep their lucky feet. They’re from Chicago. One time I saw her jump inside of a trash barrel — she was bleeding everywhere, they turned over all the tables and chairs, dry humping the club. They have dark powers.

“When the sun sets on the industrial age all the spirits will be free.” Absolutely unreal nature power anthems about yearning for the destruction of mankind’s crimes, Indian Revenge, making this life your own, “what point trying let go hold on worth is lifeless.” Hundreds of riffs. I counted at least forty different musical styles on this album. Each album is really unique and definitely has a strange concept structurally tracked out behind it all. This one may be my favorite from them. Colin Matthews on guitar and vocals and Tom Hohmann on drums and keyboards and vocals simultaneously: now that’s what I call talent! Genuine, real great guys too. See also Black Elf Speaks, Bullroarer, and Elfish Presley.

Vampire Can’t Key Cutter (Load records)

Brew up some mushroom tea, stare at the Puffy cover art, and then have two cheers to Vampire Belt and Can’t on their mesmerizing, well recorded, mind erasing, harsh ass hell, oscillating noise grudge fuck of an album, “Key Cutter.” I loved it! It molested me, almost unyieldingly, like a five-eyed glass lion with false teeth and wax lips. Very entertaining — even though some of it sounds kind of forced together instead of flowing steady, it’s still pretty damn good — but I’m into uneasy listening and painful sounds.

Koenjihyakkei Angherr Shisspa (Skingraft records)

JapanZappa/Thrash/Kraut/Prog/Jazz/Fusion/Funk/Opera operation with Yoshida Tatsuya of Ruins on Vocals and the most technically perfect long-winded structured drumming I may have ever heard. 8 songs, 50 minutes long. That’s so ridiculous. I can’t even imagine seeing this live, ’cause it doesn’t sound real at all, I thought only computers could write songs like these, ’cause it’s crazy, crazy fast, and crazy good.

KK.Null [ergosphere] (Blossoming Noise)

Layers upon layers of digital hard noise recorded live in Moscow. Super creative pulses for beats similar to Pleasurehorse with more of an Industrial feel. Creepy and relentless with many methodically planned changes and entrancing soundscapes, making it more exciting and less boring than run of the mill power noise. It seems I can always count on Blossoming Noise to provide the great noise.

NOXAGT (self-titled) (Load Records.com)

Thick and low toned, drop tuned, but not doom or metal? Just well-arranged baritone, bass, and drums. It’s definitely harder to be an instrumental-only band and make headway in any kind of music scene these days, but Noxagt is extremely impressive and you can tell they are playing their asses off. You can’t pigeonhole their sound at all. I must admit I did find a couple of songs almost boring, but that is only because of the lack of vocals, (no violin player this album either) but they are still exciting to listen to, especially because of the great studio drum sound captured. “Ninety Nine Parallels Ago” was my favorite track on the album, mixing an early-Swans-ish kind of head pounding slow grind with my Swedish fish and chips feel to it.

Ruins Pallaschtom (Skin Graft records)

First of all at no point does this album suck. Secondly the Japanese dynamic duo whoa, Yoshida & Sasaki, drum, bass, vocal, is so massively impressive it puts anyone else attempting this style of hilarious thrash fusion jazz to shame. Seriously. (Mike Patton’s bands can’t even begin to hold a flame to this.) Pallaschtom is a very impressive 19-song clusterfuck, ending with an all-encompassing progrock medley, that actually spans the entire globe of every progrock song I’ve ever heard. They also perfectly nail every change with operatic Pikachu-on-crack sounding vocals. Album production is clear and clean, it just may be way too creative for the average ear to enjoy.

Country Teasers the empire strikes back (In the Red Records)

This outstanding Irish country twang bang, in a BrainBombs-ish repetitive murky mindfuck, with very tongue-through-someone’s-cheek lyrical stylings by the Dark Emperor Ben Wallers, proves that inside the death star of your mind, hates and virtues do make great bedfellows and your existence is a paradox. The cover of the album features a Nazi-looking guy leading a bunch of youth down the street, taken from the cover of a book on racism in the ’70s in England (published by the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies in 1982) with the same title as the album. Do the Country Teasers hate racist England? They definitely hate Kool Keith. Cunt tree don’t get no better.