AIDS Wolf - Cities Of Glass

by Simon T Diplock

Experiments in noise, exploding pigeonholes, and pushing music as far as it will go

"Opener ‘MTI’ mushes riff rock, hardcore, and tribal noise into gravely no-wave dirt, the title track snaps like a bear trap come alive and hunting your feet, and ‘Down Holy Ground’ is the shrillest, sharpest, most intense thing among a whole album of nailbomb cuts."

AIDS Wolf aren’t a normal band. If you didn’t already guess that from their name alone then things like the lack of a bass player, improvised songs, and wailing musical dementia on their second record proper will push you in the right direction. And by the time you clock the day-glo penis folded into the artwork here it’ll be blatantly obvious. But this isn’t just about being weird or wacky or abusing the latest shock tactics (although we’re sure that sort of thing is pretty high on the Wolf pack’s agenda), this is about experiments in noise, exploding pigeonholes, and pushing music as far as it will go.

The Canadian quartet hit the limits early too. Opener ‘MTI’ mushes riff rock, hardcore, and tribal noise into gravely no-wave dirt, the title track snaps like a bear trap come alive and hunting your feet, and ‘Down Holy Ground’ is the shrillest, sharpest, most intense thing among a whole album of nailbomb cuts. Occasionally maniacal frontwoman Chloe Lum should shut up and let the tunes do the talking- over the falling-bomb hiss of ‘General’ and the alarm bell battery of ‘Relevant Issues’ in particular- but the rest of the time her inhuman yells make perfect skewed sense, even when the last thing on her mind seems to be what ‘song’ the rest of the band are barrelling through.

AIDS Wolf don’t really want to break the rules though, just bend them as far as they’ll go and then push a little more. They follow the finest guidelines of punk on ‘Cities Of Glass’ see, wailing like weirdos to the scuzziest sounds but doing it as dirty and direct as possible, and at times they temper their terror too, if it means they can get across some strange point or other. Sure it’s a carnivorous and crazy record, and engages in plenty of forceful envelope-pushing too, but it’s not alien, and never totally unfamiliar.

If you need rhyme and reason and all sorts of other boring bollocks present to enjoy your music then just hit the skip button here- hell, anyone after a chirpy chorus shouldn’t even have read this far - but if you’re a fan of the blurred lines of Lightning Bolt, the progressive venom of The Locust, or the all-out aural war of Arab On Radar, just invest already. This record is howling your name.

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