Nightstick
Death to Music
Relapse
This is absolute shit.
Maybe that’s too harsh.
How’s this: anyone who remembers the old record players that had a “16” speed control knows what a “45” record played at “16” sounds like. Nightstick sound like a stoner rock band warming-up with a few Slayer covers – played at 16. Vocals have been added to Earth 2, hurrah.
The band was kind enough to include their photos inside the liner, including the frontal nudity of guitarist (electric, dobro, and lap steel) Cotie Cowgill and the fully-made up Padoinka the Clown, who is listed as a provider of “improvisational movement and interpretive dance.”
Listening to their songs like “Jarhead,” “Babykiller,” and “Young Man, Old Man,” it’s clear that Nightstick are pacifists (despite the fact that drummer Robert Williams is shown brandishing a machine gun). “Free Man” is a tirade about living outside the “system” – like all “free” people should. “In Dahmer’s Room” is a guitar-driven grind mess. Their cover of “Funkytown” – “(Won’t You Take Me To) Junkytown” – is also a mess, as the arrangement and vocalist/bassist Alex Smith’s vocals just don’t have the disco beat. Their variation of Van Halen’s “Intruder” called “Boot Party Theme” would normally land them in an insane asylum, but free Americans can do these kinds of things in 1999. The operetta called “Egghead” (it’s in three parts: “I am Egghead,” “Naked Came the Egg,” and “Egghead is Dead”) I suspect is an old Melvins record played backwards, that’s all.
Relapse, P.O. Box 251, Millersville, PA 17751; http://www.relapse.com
