From the playschool psychedelia of its cover art to its inscrutable song titles, Turtle Nipple And The Toxic Shock blares a siren of warning at you. “This is not just another hardcore album,” it announces - and Heavy Heavy Low Low are definitely not just another hardcore band.
You could call them spazzcore - many people already do, apparently - but I feel Heavy Heavy Low Low are a little beyond the untrammelled silliness and goofing off that the term implies. Oh, sure, Turtle Nipple And The Toxic Shock is the sound of a band having a lot of fun, but there’s a feeling of coherence beneath the weirdness - a sense that, as illogical as these songs may sound to anyone else, there’s a core of meaning that only they understand.
That said, I’m not sure they could explain it - even to each other. Perhaps that’s the secret - there are plenty of times where Heavy Heavy Low Low come across like some sort of Ritalin-fuelled group therapy session where language broke down and crawled into the corner, leaving the band to flail out their inner landscapes by way of musical instruments. Turtle Nipple And The Toxic Shock is jagged, enraged and enraptured, frantic, fearful and frightening, foaming at the mouth and grinning at the dispensary door - all at once.
Their name is a bit misleading, as Heavy Heavy Low Low aren’t so much heavy and low as they are fast and inventive. They can turn on the full-bore heaviness when they want to, but it’s merely one of a handful of hand-drawn aces up their collective sleeves, nestled alongside the precision timing and massively unpredictable dynamics that make Turtle Nipple And The Toxic Shock a rollercoaster of panic and fury punctuated by false endings, musical non sequiturs, and gentle hurricane eyes.
The most surprising thing about Turtle Nipple And The Toxic Shock is how quickly it’s all over… all bar the final fifteen minutes of “Please, That Bitch Will Outlive Us All”, that is, a repeatedly looped sample stretched far beyond recognition leading up to a final seventy seconds of Trent Reznor-meets-Parliament drunk drug funk.
Unlike a lot of bands who embrace randomness, Heavy Heavy Low Low manage to be random in random ways - you’re never quite sure what’s coming next, except that it’ll be loud, weird and stinking of good times. Not the sort of thing you’d want to listen to every day, but a great antidote to the increasingly faceless hordes of oh-so-serious tough-guy hardcore.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: hardcore, Heavy Heavy Low Low, punk, spazzcore, Turtle Nipple And The Toxic Shock, weird
