I didn't even know that ex-Aussie Tim Evans' band Degreaser were still an active thing. I bought their first two albums, Bottom Feeder and Sweaty Hands, not that long ago, and those are two slices of fevered nastiness, unfettered, unrelenting, unrepentant. They also scream of a band born to implode. You can't tame such fetid beasts, and new record Rougher Squalor (out on Ever/Never Records) still attains some of the rust and grime of those awfully awesome releases. But it is clear on LP #3 that the trio want to fuse their dissonant elements into one awed, cellular whole, and in so doing have carved out a squalling psych behemoth where the trip is long and real yet the songs retain brevity and bite (not one of the eleven tracks breach four minutes). It's like someone herded Bo Ningen, White Hills, Straightjacket Nation and Coloured Balls into a holding pen then eviscerated the lot of them, scooped up the guts and sinew and molded them into the band we hear vomiting forth from the speakers. It's all in the wailing wah-riddled guitar, ripping the ozone apart fibre by fibre. There is still moments of Bird Blobs chicanery in the morbid monotone delivery of 'Do Me In', but mostly Rougher Squalor is all about cutting loose and steering straight for the eye of the sun, dragging us all kicking and screaming along with them. Fantastic stuff.
