Creature With The Atom Brain - I Am The Golden Gate Bridge

by Tom Mendelsohn

Mark Lannegan's sillier mate

"These days we rate things exclusively on how much we’d like to play them on Guitar Hero, and a good half dozen tracks here would be very fitting indeed."

Creature With The Atom Brain has pedigree (hence, we guess, the small brain; inbreeding or something). He plays guitar and keyboards for Millionaire, and tours with Mark Lanegan. We assume that not only would this make him handy in fights, it should also mean that he plays some mean hard rock. And, what do you know; our assumptions are justified by the cold hard fact of product: 'I Am The Golden Gate Bridge' is significantly catchier than its own acronym, and it rocks hard.

What’s more, this record has that rare commodity in today’s world of soulless, corporate yadda yadda – creativity. That is to say, while it is hard rock more or less of the stoner rock school of guitar work, which is good in itself, there are a lot of less standard ideas playing around at the edges of songs. The guitar itself is sharp but thin, a deliberate move which takes away a lot of the heavy. Instead, amidst the crunch, there’s quite a bit of interesting synthy fooling around, which adds a satisfying dimension to the music.

There are several songs here which are genuinely excellent. These days we rate things exclusively on how much we’d like to play them on Guitar Hero, and a good half dozen here would be very fitting indeed. He can make all sorts of noises come out of his instruments, can Creature, aka Aldo Struyf, and the majority of them are good. Mark Lanegan and Millionaire's Tim Vanhamel both guest on the record, which is also deeply to the credit of all concerned.

Being Belgian, Creature has a fine line in twisting English into unexpected shapes. Well, he does in terms of album and song titles – we can’t make out much of the lyrics, but we fervently hope they are as bonkers as songs named ‘Is That Lady Sniff?’ and ‘Rapeman’s Scalp’. We also hope that it is meant to sound a bit ridiculous, rather than it being the product of a confused man whose English isn’t very good. Nevertheless, the whole package has a bleak air of menacing humour, and we like the album for its darkly silly atmosphere as much as anything else, though it does totally wail.

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