Vulgar Pang
The Pleasures of Schizophrenia
Rock Garden
You never know what you will get reviewing records for Ink 19. I tossed this on the player and it opened with one of those bizarre weirded-out jazz experiments like James Chance used to spin. Just as I was about to hit the FFW button, it dropped right into a decent metal guitar work out. If nothing else, it’s a clever psyche-out move. Once you get past that little trickery, the rest of the record proceeds with some decent and very moody metal and power rock.
What’s nice about this album is it doesn’t attempt to rock out for a solid hour, but changes pace several times. The opening jazz becomes the awkwardly named “Vardoulacha,” a gothic vampire-themed number about selling your soul for a positive review in an online magazine. A few cuts later, we find ourselves in “River City Blues,” which hold a few reggae-influenced metal riffs, then blends into a bridge that nearly sounds like an old Slade or Mott the Hoople disc. And the final cut, “Valentine Jesus,” is more of a bluesy spoken word piece than anything else. While I don’t hear a hit in this debut collection, I do hear a well thought out sound, crisp musicianship, and enough skills to make me throw this in the CD cassette for a few drives to and from my day job.
Vulgar Pang: http://www.vulgarpang.com
