This is a reissue of a 2007 CDr from these masked and mustachioed Western Massachusetts weirdos. I don’t know quite what to make of it, but I think it is safe to say that this is a band best appreciated live: a mere CD cannot hope to convey the charm of a band that so closely resembles a circus gone horrifically, irrevocably awry. Nevertheless, this release certainly achieves a degree of uniqueness and provides an interesting counterbalance to pretty much everything else that is being released these days. If pressed, I guess I would describe the aesthetic here as “frenzied No Wave band fronted by a hyperactive child who has been slipped some LSD.”
Lamentably, there are two pretty massive hurdles that prevent me from quite warming to this album. The first is that the “songs” are pretty random-sounding, jagged, stop-and-start flurries of sound. It is very hard to enjoy an album this splintered and hyperactive, even though the individual components are often pretty striking (squelching electronics, skittering free drumming, skwonky guitar abuse, etc.). It just doesn’t feel like there is any progression or anything to grab onto, merely a succession of blurts of disjointed sounds. The second, and more problematic, issue is that the vocals are spectacularly shrill and annoying (“the insane face atop the hulking freak,“ according the album summary). That’s pretty much a deal-breaker for me, as is the sheer absurdity of the lyrics (“Momma’s had an accident at the restaurant…I’ve been split into a plate of warm sunny-side-ups with a side order of home fries.”) Notably, however, both of those traits definitely give the band their rather singular character and are probably considered assets to those who have a greater appreciation of Dadaist theatrics and general subversiveness than I do.
On the positive side, this is definitely the first album that I have ever heard where I can say things like “is that a cat in a blender?” or “that sounds like a duck crashing a tractor” without a trace of metaphor or hyperbole. These guys certainly deliver unpredictability, derangement, willful infantility, and aggressive wrongness with an enthusiasm that I really can’t get anywhere else. Also, I very much appreciated the Worm’s unwavering passion for entropy, as well as their attempt to be heavy in a fairly novel way. I definitely don’t think that I ever need to listen to this album again, but the mixture of unbridled creativity and cheerful self-sabotage displayed here has certainly won my grudging respect.
6/10
