Count Boozula

Drunkenstein. What a stupid name, it makes them sound like a sloppy funk covers band at a student disco in 1987. Not a bad band, but they should get someone to work on their PR.

DRUNKENSTEIN – THE INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC OF DRUNKENSTEI (1908) – Rivet Gun Records

This is a very good record – comfortably the pick of our recent review pile – but it does display two huge faults, standing out like a pair of High School Musical deely boppers at a state funeral. Let’s start with the positive, though. First up, the playing is rather wonderful. Both guitars manage to combine rock heaviness with some intriguing curlicues, but the palme d’or belongs to the rhythm section: Snuffy from the much missed Marconi’s Voodoo supplies rich chocolatey bass, equally at home with funky slap figures and metal density, evident in the awkward yet propulsive intros to “Equation” and “Kool Aid”; Tim “Junkie Brush” Lovegrove’s drums are just as enticing, thudding yet precise – even finicky – in a manner that slightly recalls Zappa alumnus Terry Bozzio.

The compositions play well to these strengths, “Doktorr Black” rising from a lightly gothic guitar haze to a sludgy tsunami of noise. “Red Shift” takes a reverse stroll along the same path, opening with a righteous clatter, only to drop suddenly into a slow offbeat lope, in which reggae zombies scuff the aural sediment at the bottom of a trough of grunge rock. In fact, the track changes tempo and direction a number of times, but manages to avoid sounding uncertain or ill-thought out.

Letting all this excellent work down are the twin crimes of forced levity and overstrained vocal cords. The former is best displayed in the Dr Shotover aping spoken introductions to each song, delivered critically by a world-weary incumbent from a gents’ club wingback chair, an example of self-deprecation so contrived that we feel we’re imprisoned in some kerrazy rag week penal colony, a jester’s gulag, in which Pat Sharpe is a grotesque cackling overlord of wacky agony. Tragically this air of silliness over proceedings is not only as funny as a grubby, twitchy child repeatedly demanding you pull his finger on a long bus ride, but it detracts from the EP’s tightly controlled and intelligently constructed music.

Tightly controlled, that is, except for the vocals, our second bugbear. In his previous band, Fork, James Serjeant sang in a quiet insidious whisper, like the secret voice of guilt nagging at your conscience, but in the rather more full-bodied sound of Drunkenstein his voice simply sounds strained and clumsy. Even odder, when the rest of the band join in the effect is even worse, despite the fact Snuffy and Lovegrove have turned in perfectly reasonable lead vocal duties in other bands: we’re all for vocal brutality and a maelstrom of tortured voices, but the caterwauling at the end of “Red Shift” just sounds like cranky toddlers whose bedtime rusk is an hour overdue. The lyrics yelped are no great shakes, either, although they’re passable, Serjeant falling into his old Fork habit of trying to snare large complex concepts in tiny couplets. Take this excerpt from “Kool Aid”, which appears to be about religious cults,

Endless days of summer’s haze
To winter’s chill our souls gave way
Childhood drama, playground games
Isolation in God’s name

Not exactly Oolon Colluphid, is it?

Let’s get this straight: we only harp on about these faults, because the rest of the record is so deeply satisfying. We find a major stumbling block in the flat humour on the EP, but we guess that if you’re prepared to ask for a copy of a CD by a band named Drunkenstein, you’ve already leapt a major hurdle, and if you do there’s an enormous amount to discover on The Independent Republic. Luckily the slim CD casing means that no visitors will be able to see the band’s name on the spine.