Album Review: Playin' In Time With the Deadbeat by Slug Guts

From the menacing first strains of "Scum," the opening track on Australian post-rockers Slug Guts' third album, Playin' in Time with the Deadbeat, the journey is a ceaselessly tumultuous one, bobbing back and forth between anguished crawls and hysterically sprinting. This seven-piece band manages to create a lot of sound, with precise production honing in on all the various cacophonous elements, from multiple drums and junkyard percussion to the screaming bray of lead singer Jimi Kritzler, which is often submerged in delay or reverb, but never feels lost in the mix. The band is an amalgamation of many demented influences, borrowing heavily from the possessed churn of the Birthday Party, the frenzied broken post-rock dub of the Pop Group, and even some later goth rock influences.

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Some bands just aren’t made to linger in the light. For all the cheery, feel-good pop rock bands out there, others take solace in the cold, damp areas where ill feelings and discomfort reign supreme. Australia’s Slug Guts is one such band propelled by a fascination with all things obtuse. From haunting sing-bark vocals to piercing guitars and thumping drums, the band is well-schooled in the ways of gothic noise rock.

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Slug Guts is a pretty nasty thing to call your band. But if your music has the dark, abrasive swagger of the Australian post-punk group that carries the name, it kind of works. These guys are messy, noisy, unpolished, and with this, the band’s third full-length release, nothing much changes. Playin’ In Time With The Deadbeat starts off quickly with the appropriately titled “Scum” and never lets up.Singer Jimi Kritzler howls more than he sings and complements the raw guitar sound with equally abrasive shouts.

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