Dr. Slaggleberry have a name so terrible that they decided to use it as the title of their EP as well, just to get double mileage out of it. Say it out loud at the bus-stop, I dare you – Dr. Slaggleberry! It sounds like the name of some rather fruity and innuendo-laden animated series for children.
At least the packaging matches the product – the Dr Slaggleberry EP holds four brief slices of the most brain-twistingly bat-shit insane music I’ve heard so far this year.
Imagine the results of some horrendous high-speed motorway accident in which there was a collision between a very stoned free-jazz quintet in a Morris Minor, a rusty transit van packed with a Dillinger Escape Plan covers band and a fast motorbike being ridden by Les Claypool from Primus. The people-jam that the paramedics would be left to deal with might, by some arcane and sinister science, be resurrected and reshaped into something like Dr. Slaggleberry.
Dr. Slaggleberry have little regard for such common-place niceties as verse-chorus structures, keys, scales or melody. Instead they’re making an all-out assault on the accepted standards of music.
Anaemic amphetamine flurries of guitar notes trill and drill over synthetic bass sounds and drumming as provided by Animal from the Muppet Show, with the whole lot decorated sporadically with howled vocals that appear to have been fed through the many stomp-boxes of Beelzebub’s own pedal-board of doom.
Make no mistake, the musicianship on the Dr. Slaggleberry EP is nothing short of staggering. But also be certain of this – easy listening, it is most definitely not.
Dr. Slaggleberry sound like the nightmare you might have if you fell asleep in the early hours with a head full of acid between the jazz and metal tents at a particularly eclectic music festival. The Dr. Slaggleberry EP is a bold and adventurous experiment, but one with extremely narrow appeal.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: Dr Slaggleberry, prog, technical metal, weird
