Review - Beast & Flood's Lanugo and Tour Dates

Sydney trio Beast & Flood have graced the pages here a few times over the past twelve or so months, ever since I saw them play an energising set at Blackwire Records supporting Roku Music on their national Collider tour. The band are finally bringing out debut LP Lanugo and it's as chaotic, guttural, twitchingly melodic and fearlessly verbose. Opener 'Gold Maids' is indicative of the piano-wire strikes and emotive strangulation that these guys deliver in sonic cyanide capsule form. There is an affinity with Adelaide's Sincerely, Grizzly and Texan titans At The Drive In and ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - the frenetic fretwork, the bearing of sinew and soul, the anguish, ambiguity and absurdity of life. Adam's vocals will be an acquired taste to some - each word is ripped from the throat, an involuntary expulsion of pent-up existentialism and ennui. but there are moments of synchronicity amidst the gnashing and gurning.

Lanugo is out June 22 on No Safe Place Records. They tour the album through June/July/August - see below for dates and supports:

25/06 - RAD, Woollongong w/ Milkk, Solid Effort
26/06 - Blackwire, SYD w/ Hannahband, Polyfox & the Union of Most Ghosts

09/07 - Rics, BRIS w/ On VHS

10/07 - The Bearded Lady, BRIS w/ Ghost Notes, Draining Pool, Low Season

11/07 - Beatdisc, Parramatta w/ Carb On Carb + Bare Grillz + Sweater Season

16/07 - Phoenix, Canberra w/ Primary Colours + Mind Blanks

17/07 - The Metropolitan, Adelaide w/ No Action + Great Oceans + David Crosby's Sinus

18/07 - Vice Bar, Melbourne w/ Worm Crown + Nun of the Tongue

24/07 - The Brisbane Hotel, Hobart w/ Naked + All The Weathers

01/08 - The Hamilton Station Hotel, Newcastle

07/08 - The Old Manly Boatshed, Sydney w/ Ruth Carp & The Fish Heads

EXCLUSIVE STREAM - Worm Crown's Debut LP Trauma

Super excited to open up the week, and June (winter in Australia, summer here in Europe), with an exclusive listen to the debut album from Melbourne scuzzrats Worm Crown. Ever since bassist Andrew contacted me about getting shows in Brisbane a couple years ago, I've been keeping a close eye on these guys. The tenaciousness and feverish desperation that accompanies these bursts of fetid noise are what makes Worm Crown a frightening prospect - from Dasyi's eye-rolling trance and spit-flecked yowls, Seb's sinew-stretching stints behind the kit, Andrew yoyoing between contempt and glee, a schizophrenic metronome. A show in Melbourne last year saw the trio become a duo due to an illness with Seb, and the decrepit drum machine that took his place called it quits a few songs in. Katie (Deep Heat/Shaking Hell) gamely stepped in and took the show in a new direction, but the nihilistic effort that oozed forth in those first songs was the kind of gritty anguish and ambiguous anger that I simply cannot get enough of.

Trauma, recorded by Simon Cotter at Headgap Studios, is a record that extends these notions, tempering the serration with moments of measured madness. Kicking off with fit-inducing drumbeat, bleeding in feedback squall and then a thick, dirty bassline, Dasci's vocals suitable stripped from his oesophagus in unkempt rage, 'No Glamour' is quintessential Worm Crown. (I have always found the word 'baby' said in anger, anguish or pain is hilarious, for whatever reason - as is the case here). 'Organism' steps the fever up a notch, and I felt transported out of the inner suburbs of Melbourne and in the winter climes of Berlin - this isn't post punk, but there is a seasonal freeze embedded within here, the night and the desperation, that European landscapes can easily evoke. 'Pacific Drift' is more sinuous in its fever; 'Limbless' continues this downward spiral. 'Hollow' shows the slow build of insanity before the catastrophic meltdown, which occupies half the song. Which sees a turning point in the record - 'Reliever Deceiver' is a slowly coiled boiler, the inexorable fall from grace that lingers in the blood; 'Retire' is a punk relic, Dasci barking syllables, yet it is all relatively muted, the bass strangely at the forefront, almost poppy in its addictiveness. 'Nine' (the eighth track here) is a lengthy number that barely shifts from its unkempt intensity, a six minute exercise in pressurised endurance. 'Sunlight' pricks this bubble, the more frenetic unleashing of anguish a welcome return. 'Teen Life' somehow simultaneously plods through a sea of evisceration and does it in under two minutes - the fury unbridled yet also maintained. 'Ritual' picks up the pace with the intensity before the devastating title track ties things up in a bloody bow.



Bands like Yes I'm Leaving and Sour Cream from Sydney and God Bows to Math in Auckland are probably the closest contemporaneous comparisons to be made to these guys, but Worm Crown will stick out like a diseased thumb no matter how many of their peers' bodies you pile them under. Trauma is exactly that - an exercise in tension, anxiety and desperation - but on that you come out of grinning fearlessly, cracked teeth and bloodied mouth, no longer of sound mind, and proud never to turn back.

Worm Crown launch Trauma Saturday June 6 alongside The Kremlings, Plyers and Cosmic Kahuna at Yah Yah's.

Rancid Mutton

I somehow missed commenting on this brutal bile-fuelled band at the beginning of the year, then again when they supported Sonic Masala Records' own Gazar Strips on their Sparkling EP tour in May. Well I'm sure these guys don't need much of an introduction if you are into gutter noise punk rock outta Melbourne. To the rest of you - introducing Mutton.

I first heard 'In Between The Dirt', the last track off their self-titled EP, and thought of fellow trash Batpiss (one of my favourite breakout bands of last year). But this is even more indebted to Yow and his acolytes than most of the pricks running around Brunswick, and that alone makes them an exciting proposition. you can't state that this is particularly "new" - but what's original when you are flailing on the floor trying to gouge your eyes out with a broken pool cue? Plus they have a band T-shirt of Sam Kekovich being torn apart by rabid sheep - an in-joke for the Aussie AFL/lamb-eating crowd, sure, but that imagery alone buys them miles of shit-stained cred.

Mutton are already aligning themselves with some of the gold-flecked detritus of the Australian underground, playing shows with the likes of Sewers, Cuntz, White Walls, Scul Hazzards, Worm Crown, Bone and the excellent DEAD - but these guys are flaying themselves to the front of the pack. Join in on the flagellation.

The Worm Is Crowning

I got an email out of the blue a few weeks ago from fledgling Melbourne noise trio Worm Crown, desperate for a show up in Brisbane. I wasn't able to put on a show for them, but at the last minute managed to get them slots on a Masses show and the Tenth Court festival (nice work Matt on that, by the way!). Before this I didn't know a thing about them - but am always willing to help a band out if they ask nice enough (and happen to be housemates with a member of Franco Cozzo - the band, not the carpet kingpin...)

I checked them out at the Masses gig - whilst their 20 minute set was definitely one of raggedness and sloppy abandon, which also culminated in lead Darcy accidentally headbutting a guy in the crowd making the punter's face spray blood (actually that was a good thing), there was a lot of potential there. I spoke to bassist Andrew over a couple beers, he gave me their two releases and duly left before fights broke out. Nice blokes.

But with a name like Worm Crown, you know the music is something else again. There is a love for atonal squall, Jesus Lizard annihilation (although not that deliberate pummeling that you get with them), Minutemen ferocity - there is a lot of potential here. They released EP Human Waste in November, and here is Rinse, another EP out in cassette form. The single 'OCD' is up on the Triple J Unearthed website for download - I think you really need to check these boys out. They are a continual work in progress, and their work in the studio is already that serrated mid-fi grind that great things burst forth from.