Don't Get Me Wrong, He's a Nice Guy, but He's a Mouth Breather

The Jesus Lizard - Bang

The Jesus Lizard sound pretty much like the name would imply. Fucked up and weird. These crazy noise rockers broke up some years ago, and this is their final release, a best of/live/rarities type thing. Like with their music, they seem to have deliberately eschewed order and gone out of their way to confound expectations when compiling this album.

Overall the music is reminiscent of Nirvana more than anything else, with the singer's mumbly vocals and the loose and messy style of the other musicians, but a whole lot more experimental (for want of a better term!) and with far less mainstream appeal. As I mentioned last week, the guitarist of The Jesus Lizard, Duane Denison, went on to form Tomahawk with Mike Patton. I was expecting his guitarwork to be even further into the realm of crazy noise on this album than it is in Tomahawk's stuff, but while there are certainly a few freak-outs by and large it's not too far afield from your standard grunge stuff. The weirdness comes more from the erratic structures and melodies, and the lyrics and vocals, more than from the way they play their instruments.

For me the best track is the second to last, 'White Hole', which is a mellow ambient track with the guitar playing harmonics over low noise, completely different to everything else on the album, but you can see shades of Tomahawk in it. The rest of the album is good too, but a little samey for me to listen to for an hour solid. It's pretty good stuff, but I expect more variety from insane noise bands.