By: Jake Wallace & Victor Van Ommen
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 28/10/2016
Label: E.One Heavy |
SPV Steamhammer
“Gold” is more than an album, it’s an invitation to get your ass down to the rock show and have it get beat in the pit.
“Gold” CD//DD//LP track listing:
1). Playing Poor
2). Baby Teeth
3). Participation Trophy
4). Mental Illness as Mating Ritual
5). Ghost Trash
6). Charlie Chaplin Routine
7). Of Course You Do
8). I See You Are Also Wearing A Black T-Shirt
9). Bloody Like the Day you were Born
10). I Have A Prepared Statement
The Review
Atlanta 3-piece noise punk merchants Whores. have returned with more no-holds barred behaviour on their new release 'Gold' which came out on October 28th on E.One Records. This band certainly need no introduction but for those unfamiliar, it can be described in a couple words... nasty fucking noise.
The album has an impressive 10 tracks and each one is a brutal, unrelenting assault in its own right. The other mind-blowing aspect of this band, is the fact that despite only having 3 members, they manage to create a towering, heavy sound. To kick things off, Track 1 is called 'Playing Poor'. The first few seconds give you a taste of what's to come with that rumbling fuzz bass and before you can register what's going on, the song takes off into their trademark style of aggressive noise punk. It's a super tight unit and the vocal style fits the tempo and heaviness of the riffs wonderfully.
'Baby Teeth' comes next and tips the scale into sludgier territory. The guitar and bass tones are heavy as Christ and the drums pummel away like a sledgehammer. The breakdowns towards the end with isolated bass are great and once the whole unit comes back in again it is carnage. If you had any baby teeth before this song started, you'll be sure to be spitting them out once it's over. 'Participation Trophy' is the third track on the album. Another ripping riff to begin with and then the vocals start to take the lead, shouting every syllable with utmost viscerality. Parts of the vocals on this track remind me of Maynard James Keenan after smoking 100 Marlboro with a throat infection. Very heavy shit indeed.
'Mental Illness As Mating Ritual' has one of the many excellent song titles on this record. Whores. are merciless when it comes to riff writing and every last one of them are ferocious. The thick, fuzz bass fills every crevice of space in the low-end and the guitar has freedom to run riot on top of it. 'Ghost Trash' comes next and begins with a Clutch-styled riff before going into one of the many isolated bass breakdowns. The dynamics of having little touches of clean guitar among this monstrosity is a great effect and when the pedals are kicked in, you really notice how powerful the riffs are. The drums are particularly great on this track with some excellent fills between the episodes of manic noise-craft.
'Charlie Chaplin Routine' ups the tempo and delivers a crucifying barrage of instrumentation. High octane behaviour that crosses a brief area of sludge halfway through before returning to the fast-paced wrecking ball that the song started with. 'Of Course You Do' is a straight up stoner rock track in the vein of Kyussor Melvinsand has some fantastic drumming keeping the ship afloat. There are some killer riffs in this track and it never loses steam as they keep churning out the goods. The last section at around 3 minutes sounds like a flight of hornets besieging a burning city to eradicate any living survivors. Devastatingly heavy.
Track 8 ‘I See You Are Also Wearing A Black T-shirt' wins my award for the best song title of 2016. Coarse screaming vocals leading the onslaught with pure disdain for whatever makes him so angry. This track has a bit more of a traditional punk structure and the riffs are so weighted that Chuck Norris may need a few extra eggs in the morning to attempt to carry them. 'Bloody Like the Day You Were Born' is the penultimate track on the album. It is maybe one of the angriest sounding tracks on the album and the atmosphere is filled with psychotic fury. Yet again, they make superb use of the sections without guitar, allowing the bass sounds to permeate through and provide a pedestal for the 6 string to rear its ugly neck.
The final track on the album 'I Have a Prepared Statement' is without a doubt my favourite track. Saving the best for last and all that. It begins with some guitar feedback which gives way to the beast lurking behind. The patient drums help build the moment up and the faint sound of the bass riff under the feedback makes you want to beg for the guitar to rip in and complete the trifecta. And it does. One of the best riffs I've heard in a long while and the vocals linger nicely between words to drag out this powerhouse. The lyrics 'I'm gonna sink this ship, down, down down!' are extremely catchy and seem to use up every last drop of energy that Christian Lembach has. The brief false stop at 4:40 makes you desperately hope the riff will return and before that thought has time to process... it's on top of you. It's a hugely impressive track and definitely what I would've picked to close the album.
Whores. displays a keen sense of what makes a song a song by making sure that each riff, verse, or drum fill spins violently around a hooky chorus, like water does a drain. Coupling hard rhymes with a gruesome distortion on pretty much every instrument is the formula that makes these songs burst at the seams, literally. “Gold” is therefore more than an album, it’s an invitation to get your ass down to the rock show and have it get beat in the pit.
“Gold” is available everywhere now
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