Curlupanddie
Unfortunately We’re Not Robots
Revelation
If my friend and co-worker Mike B. hadn’t shot himself to death about a year ago, this is exactly the kind of album I would have wanted his opinion on. Mike was way into this kind of hardcore skullfuck death metal stuff, and I want to have been able to ask him what he thought of Curlupanddie. I bet he would have loved them. Drummer Jesse Fitts bangs ‘em loud; Matt Fuchs plays all guitars and basses; singer Mike Minnick has little to do except scream. Sometimes, that’s all you need.
Most of the tracks here are pretty much really fast punk/metal guitar and drums with an overcaffeinated singer going “Lai lai lai lai laiiiiiiii!” over and over. Which is cool if you’re in a bad mood, or a good mood, and you like this. But the Rule of Sting applies here: if you’ve ever listened to an album by Sting, you will hate most of this CD so much you won’t believe it.
And yet: it’s just possible that Curlupanddie has a sense of humor. The song titles are hilarious (“100 MPH Vomit Dedicated to Jon,” “Doctor Doom, a Man of Science, Doesn’t Believe in Jesus. Why the Fuck Do You?” “On the Run From Johnny Law Ain’t No Trip to Cleveland”), the fact that the first four tracks consist solely of one word being screamed on each (“We!” “Are!” “All!” “Dead!”) is a hoot, and the way the lyrics printed on the inside are both impossible to read and completely NOT the lyrics to the songs on the album is funny stuff.
And their longer songs go interesting places: “You’d Be Cuter if I Shot You in the Face” has a long expansive martial folk feel to it, and “Rich Hall (Runner-Up in a Carson Daly Lookalike Contest)” gets all strange here too. I suspect that Curlupanddie is too smart to be down with the death metal gig forever, so maybe their next album will actually be about something, and won’t be quite so full of “LAAAAAAAIIIIIIIII!”
Just don’t go around shooting yourself, dammit. That sucks.
Revelation Records: http://www.revelationrecords.com
