Guitar Wolf
Golden Black
Narnack
Being that their particular brand of rocket-fueled punk burns out so quickly, there’s something antithetical in a Guitar Wolf album that’s over 74 minutes long, but that’s exactly what the “greatest hits” disc Golden Black aims for, filling up on the best of the group’s late-‘90s-through-mid-‘00s material. The band’s sound is somewhere between gravel crunch, finely-tuned chopper engine, and lo-fi supernova and despite having been around for well over a decade, their recordings always sound gloriously awful as though they were recorded on an answering machine with a tape that’s decades old. The guttural, primal nature of the backing music – check out the pure noise guitar solo on “Shinkansen High Tension” that obliterates every other sound the song has to offer – harbors a danger that’s wonderfully at odds with the carefree, ridiculous lyrics. The Japanese kitsch-factor of “Mars Susie was born on planet Mars/ She won’t stop till she’s dancing/ Yeaaoh! Mars Twist!” from “Mars Twist” is practically through the roof and fairly indicative of their body of work as a whole. It’s big, dumb fun in the vein of The Ramones infused with DIY recording/production ethos – what’s more punk rock than that?
Narnack Records: http://www.narnackrecords.com
