NEW DRUNKS

Our Cold 100 chart got electro-shocked back into health this week with a deluge of prime noise arriving via both physical and electronic means. I'd love to (and eventually will) excrete some words about the first three great psych/blurt releases on my buddy Eric's brand new Tape Drift label, or the excellent free-download live thing by Richmond behemoth Caustic Castle, or the seven-year-old drum and guitar damage of W!77!N6 (aka Willing), since all of those offer nicely varied takes on noise, drone, improv-rock, and all the oceans of gray that lie in between. But for some reason I found myself in the mood for some all-out, unrelenting capital-N Noise, and while the second track on Tape Drift's Century Plants CD certainly qualifies, the best candidate turns out to be the unexpected aural vomit of New Drunks, courtesy of a new New Jersey label with the fine hick-baiting name of Fuckallyall.

The nine tracks on Minus are all relatively standard noise fare, and I mean that as a compliment - all the blasts, scrapes, crashes, and annihlating aural assaults are nicely familiar, and consistently interesting even when they're not something you haven't heard before, which is true most of the time. Brian Wayne (the one guy behind New Drunks) was just a teenaged Alabama recluse when he concocted these multi-dubbed splatterings in the early 90's, recording only, uh, "acoustic" instruments (like forks, spoons, blenders, and fans) and then mixing the resulting tapes into overloaded infinity, without the aid of any effects or pedals. So I'd say you could forgive Brian for aping his heroes (Merzbow, Masonna, etc) since he was so young, except there's nothing here that needs forgiving - if you like constant sonic abrasion, the kind that shifts and darts like a hyperactive chimp yet has the unrelenting volume and dedication of a lumbering elephant, then I defy you to find anything to complain about on Minus.

I'd pick out some favorite tracks but really, they're all eerily on the same exact level of quality, filled with deep layers of crunching attack, impulsive semi-rhythmic blasts, distorted beyond-the-red audio maximization, and the kind of piled-high noise stacks that induce aural hallucinations. I've picked out "Meth Mouth" simply because it beats most of the others (by about 1%) in terms of uninterrupted, unleavened noise, and at five and a half minutes is just about the perfect length (I try not to bias myself against arbitrary stuff like track-lengths, but I'm just a sucker for short, succinct cuts of noise, something John Wiese is a particular master of, and something that New Drunks will hopefully continue to dole out more frequently now that Mr. Wayne is 15 years the wiser...)

mp3:
NEW DRUNKS - "Meth Mouth" from Minus