Japanther
Dump The Body In Rikki Lake
Menlo Park
You’re either going to mildly like this record, or really hate it. A small scratchy guitar line backs up opaque lyrics, fuzz box distortion saturates the spectrum analyzer display on Winamp, and songs wander around like a wino on a dark street corner. You do get a deadly cool title on the disk, but while there may be bodies strewn about lyrically, there no such thing as a hook in these songs, and Japanther rarely selects the melody option on the songwriting machine. The sound is defiantly low fi, with most anything above 7 kHz a distortion harmonic. Lyrically, it’s lost love with occasional cryptic voiceovers, but it’s never clear what if anything a given track relates to.
OK, I’m being nice, this record makes my teeth grate. Track 13 is drilling my brain now, and this disc will never make the elevator music rotation. Somehow this band gets to tour from time to time, and claims punk credibility. Like a cargo cult aping the motions but missing the point, they trade energy for claustrophobia, politics for obscurity, and quick E chord fire for weird haircuts. While I hate to just flat out nail anyone, this is a band destined for well-deserved obscurity. Buy their poster, but pass on the disk.
Menlo Park Recordings: http://www.menloparkrecordings.com/
