Bulgogi 2016
Juan Dissed The Cyclops Baby
Jovial nightmares from North Carolina punks whose moral dilemmas get resolved with a breach-and-screech method.
You can’t hurt a child on TV but, no matter how comically cinematic this quartet’s compositions are, they have little reverence for any trope there is, be it disparaging one-eyed infants or squeezing a rock opera onto a four-track EP. It’s not for the sake of briefness yet, what with “Rotten” – a lullaby that finishes such a strange package – fizzling out after 7 minutes of organized madness; it’s all about emotional impact of a myriad melodies crammed into a single piece of music.
As a result, “School” may start with a delicate falsetto phrase but its fragile balladry is immediately smashed with a heavy riff which gives way to the chorale kind of brutal growling to move the ground from under your dancing feet and make them land on a pop platform. More relentless and gloomy, “Hymn” doesn’t disappoint either, its 8-bit undercurrent wrapped in a bass throb to introduce lysergic funk to the heady mix, before the theatrical delirium of “The Drill” is ramming the whole electric oratorio home, to a rave floor. It can be unsettling there, yet you’ll feel compelled to visit this Asheville abode again and again.
****1/4
