I think it’s… simian fever!

Six Finger Satellite: Severe Exposure

When I listen to Severe Exposure, I picture the studio as more like… an emergency room with polished aluminum walls, or like Dr. Frankenstein’s lab in the old James Whale films. Stacked high with machines that shower sparks or fire arcs of electricity around the room, just hooked into the synthesizers and amplifiers, and the band just these filed-tooth aliens in business suits, tearing the whole place apart. Noisy, metallic, antiseptic chaos.

The clatter of a badly grounded mic and spaced-out moaning opens “Bad Comrade” then a tumbling dub beats and the distorted, scraping clangour of synthesizers for a couple minutes until guitars come slicing the fuck out of everything. Ladies and gentlemen, the satellite has landed. Now we’re in for it. High-calibre noise rock, with an emphasis on noise and distortion, with surgical detachment if not surgical precision. The guitars are pure scuzzy cacophony and the synths are used as sharp space melodies that can turn to knives at any time. It can be tuneful. “Parlour Games” with its savage robo-guitar attack and scaling synthesizer part is downright danceable, and “Rabies (Baby’s Got the)” is b-movie horror-punk chic.

Most of the songs sound as if they were recorded in a big steel tunnel, the noise just bounces off everything and amplifies itself to hammering headache-inducing power. A couple have a smidgen of high fidelity sound, like the throttling maniac guitars of “Pulling a Train” but most of Severe Exposure is fuzzed-out noise through and through with only the cold piercing synth tearing holes in it for air, and it all leaves your ears ringing with machine-gun fire.

****

~ by jshopa on July 26, 2008.