By Holly Day
What Tyrants delivers is adrenaline-fueled garage rock with a ferocity and intensity that keeps the listener excited and interested from the first track to the last.
The guitar riffs are heavy with glorious static and fuzz, while the vocals are almost decipherable through the heavy layers of reverb—so saying, if you’re someone who insists on singing along with everything you listen to, you may want to consult a lyric sheet first to make sure you’re not just making stuff up.
There’s a great retro feel to this album that reminds me a lot of Jon Spencer’s early, grungier recordings, but more desperation and angst than machismo. It’s happy, danceable music on the surface, but there’s a dark, honest, beautiful thread of angry resignation that runs beneath all of these songs that keeps this from being just another noisy rock band in love with their effect pedals.
Some of the stand-out tracks on this album are the strip-club burlesquey blues track “Shag” and the radio friendly rough pop song, “Muffins,” which, for some reason, I keep trying to figure out the lyrics of all on my own, but come up with a different set of words almost every time (because I’m too stubborn for lyric sheets).
Forged Artifacts/http://forgedartifacts.com/
Digital download https://whattyrants.bandcamp.com/ or limited edition cassette, 33 minutes
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