Tag: death rock

REVIEW: Pleasure Venom – Pleasure Venom (2018)

Pleasure Venom is the 2018 self-titled release by Austin, TX based “experimental garage punk outfit” Pleasure Venom.

Right off the bat, Pleasure Venom unabashedly provokes an image of the very ‘in’ gothic aesthetics, though doesn’t utilize them in any particularly meaningful way. From the Birthday Party-esque guitar cacophony on Gunt to a general rundown of Robert Smith’s pedalboard effects (tremolo, flange, reverb, you can guess the rest) across the entire album, none of these aesthetics serve the particular songs all that well.

The 6 track album is a mixture of stomp and romp punk pub rock and goth dance rhythms. Everyone is on beat for the most part, and front person Audrey Campbell’s vocal delivery can be quite thrilling (especially on tracks Deth and Untitled). But if you feel underwhelmed while reading this, well, that’s how I felt listening to it.

Closing track Eddy is capped off with a great orchestrated outro, a much needed splash of rich color and depth delivered as a final gesticulation of the death rock aesthetics purported to define the album. I would have loved to see more of this throughout the album, letting the interludes and outros work the album’s aesthetic angle while pushing the songs the band had written a little harder, with less distractions.

Pleasure Venom is a punk record through and through. Perhaps there is a harder Grunge rock sound underlying it all, but experimental and No Wave (as one Bandcamp user called it) it is not.

What can I say? The record is fun, loud, and fast in all the normal places. There isn’t much to take in. Maybe that’s what their audience wants.

For fans of: Secret Shame, Amyl and The Sniffers, Mudhoney

Like Pleasure Venom? Give these a listen: Dame, Scratch Acid, Circus Lupus

REVIEW: False Figure – A Promised End (2019)

While listening to False Figure, ‘a promised end’ to this mundane EP was quite reassuring.

I’m fairly certain I’ve heard this record before. Actually many times before. There is nothing distinguishing this album from the many others that are nearly identical to it, many also released under the flags of two-word alliterated band names. All parts of this album are interchangeable with the parts of other songs on the album.

False Figure’s look and sound scream a Gene Belcher “this is ME now” level of vapid personality. Actually, the band name does seem quite fitting now that I think of it. Death rock is the new gentrified neighborhood. Disneyfied ad nauseam, bands bring to their work the ingenuity and artistic truth of an NBC sitcom. Detached from its subcultural roots while continuing to profit off of it, the faux-goth wave of recent years wears the sardonic mask necessary to keep selling children black leather tchotchkes.

The prophecy foretold, pop hath eaten itself.

For fans of: Secret Shame

Like False Figure? maybe try one of these instead: Geisha Girls, Rule of Thirds, Killed By Deathrock Vol.1

REVIEW: Geisha Girls – Disappearing Act (2006)

Geisha Girls puts their contemporaries to shame with accessible high intensity alternative rock tinged with death rock sensibilities. Pounding tom percussion, use of 16th note hi-hats, and angular power-chord-shy guitar work may feel familiar to any Rikk Agnew/Rozz Williams era Christian Death fans. But with dry production and Hot Hot Heat styled vocals, Disappearing Act is as distinctively 2000s alternative rock as it is anything else.

The bass bounces, nearly plodding along with angsty disregard. That is until Retaining Water. With walking bass lines and a stripped down section where the bassist shines, Geisha Girls skirt the repetitive nature that current death rock bands accept as the boundaries of the genre.

In other ways, Disappearing Act is what Arctic Monkeys fans thought they were into. Tonal similarities wouldn’t be lost on a listener of both bands, but Geisha Girls don’t let the listener off as easy. Songs like This is Novelty, Finding Peers, and Skinny Wrists use dizzying compositional structures with puncturing frenetic drumming.

If you enjoy alternative rock, and are looking to get into something a little bit harder, you need to hear this album.

For fans of: Phantom Planet, Art Brut, Christian Death

Like Geisha Girls? Give these a listen: Infinite Void, Dame, The Atom Age