Mop Buckets is a new quartet from Los Angeles, California, made of
three guys from
Cunts
(the ones from LA not
the ones from Australia with a Z, don't be misled by their album lame Metal cover artwork, these guys
play cool punk songs) which is a good point for a start as I can't help
but feel a lot of respect for anyone playing in a non-grindcore band
called Cunts (there is actually a Japanese grindcore band called
Cunts
but it has no relevance to our topic). These guys also played in bands
like
Retox,
Dead Cross,
Niis, Qui,
Planet B
(three of them are produced by
Ipecac Recordings
by the way) and other punk/metal/trash/whatever bands from the Los Angeles
area...
So a 6-track one-sided 12" just got out on
Order 05 Records, a pretty cool label from Berlin I already mentioned in my
post about
Skeleton Glove, and it's definitely worth a write-up so here we go!
Happy, the opening track, immediately sets the scene of the next
fifteen minutes, it's going to be dark, weird and deeply tormented. The
bass and the battery lead the song, like in a lot of noise-rock track,
while the guitar and the synth/electronic noises alternate between
"reasonable" surf-ish melodies and dives into madness. Of course
the vocalist's screams and shouts are not here to help us regain our sanity and the defenceless listener can't help but be drawn into this insane delirium whirlwind.
Scroll brings the heaviness back, the guitar crushing massive
chords on your fragile eardrums, unfortunately leading at times to some very Metal-inspired parts the album didn't need at all.
The four other tracks subtly mix a heavy "noise-rock sound" with the kind of "maniac spoken words" parts which will immediately make pop in your mind the
crazy face of the leader of a famous band from California that took its name from two famous murdered Democrat brothers. Yes THIS guy. In fact, the similarity is not limited to the tones of the singer's ramblings, but also includes the music, you know that "surf guitar vibe" and all that. Of
course the Man has put his speaker talent at the service of other bands as
you well know (D.O.A, No Means No, The Melvins and of
course The Guantanamo School Of Medicine and others) and I will let
you decide which of these sound the most similar to some parts of
Mop Buckets' songs.
But don't get me wrong Mop Buckets is not spoken-words band, they increase the tempo at times and clearly leans towards an appreciable hardcore punk side.
And strangely the riff of It's A Love Song brings Refused to mind (The Deadly Rhythm?) but that's probably just me.
But my favourite track is definitely Little Fucker (the closing track) which starts like a haunting rhyme about "the little fucker, the sneaky little bugger", a highly disturbing rhyme that one can easily imagine being repeated senselessly by poor Jack Torrance, before the song unleashes, in a ball of heavy guitar and obsessive melodies, all the contained fury that the madman has stored up for too long... IS THERE NOTHING YOU CAN DO?
Brilliant!
Anyway don't get me wrong with all these comparisons, I really enjoy this (short) album (except for Scroll's lame Metal-inspired parts), there are a lot of great things in these songs but I would have appreciated more deeper plunges into "insanity" (like Little Fucker). But I'm sure the "Journey Into Madness" of these guys is just starting and the best is yet to come... in the meantime don't deny yourself the perverse pleasure of listening to Mop Buckets!
ps: I really love the cover artwork by T.J.Bohm!
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