LEWD ACTS

Black Eye Blues

Deathwish
rating icon 8 / 10

Track listing:

01. Know Where To Go
02. Wide Black Eyes
03. Night-Crawlers
04. You Don't Need Me
05. I Don't Need You
06. Who Knew the West Coast Could Be So Cold?
07. Penmanship Sailed
08. Young Lovers, Old Livers
09. Rock Gut Charlie
10. My Father Was a Locomotive
11. Nowhere to Go


Anguished vocals, dirt-caked tales of abuse and bleak woe, and savage bursts of metallic punk gobbed up with grimy sludge — what's not to like about LEWD ACTS? This is a rollicking, diseased, bilious rant of a record, a back-alley fistfight between EYEHATEGOD and THE MISFITS, all full of trailer-park ennui and post-CONVERGE hardcore scrape 'n grind.

While the record starts out with short, fast and brutal slaps to the face, LEWD ACTS can get slow and bombastic, too, as on ponderous epics like "Nowhere to Go" and "Penmanship Sailed" — five-minute slabs that come off like a sour and liverish take on post-rock NEUROSIS abuse. It's a nice counterpoint to the more frenzied squalls (see "Know Where to Go" and the beautifully-titled "Young Lovers, Old Livers"),and it makes for an even more lurching, disturbing ride than the listener might've expected at the beginning. And whether it's the self-referencing song titles, the overall brevity of the record, or the clarity of the band's grimacing vision, but the whole of "Black Eye Blues" comes off like one nihilistic movement, a mini-concept album with no heroes, no happy endings and misery to spare.

Too downtrodden and sludgy to be hardcore, too bone-scrapingly raw and yowling to be punk, and too enamored of its own dour miasma to be metal, LEWD ACTS takes the textbook definitions of all three genres and smears 'em up into a hobo stew that'll kill your buzz and dredge up the worst of your repressed memories. "Black Eye Blues" is a sick and feral little pup of a record, but it strikes a nerve as raw as a toothache, and for those who can identify with its dank, clanging blues, it'll be an all-time fave.

Author:
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • reddit
  • email

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).