Artist: Grrizli Madams
Label: Radio Študent
Release: 2012
Runtime: 39:13
Rating: 4.7/5
I don’t know what’s in the Posavje water that lets music nuts from Slovenia’s “rural fringe” so confidently steamroll the whole metropolitan music cream of the crop (or at least a damn big chunk of it), and then, after massacring the bland Slovenian average, top it all off with a record that just won’t let you out of its claws? Maybe it’s pure coincidence that the main nuclear reactor is only a stone’s throw away, but Grrizli Madams have been one of the better pieces of news under the Slovenian sky for a few years now. After almost a decade of work and bloodthirsty giving away of their cerebral juice, they’ve quite spontaneously carved out and written a confident follow-up to the juicy EP V vrtincu vsemogočnega miru, and on top of that they’ve totally outplayed and outlived every expectation, and there were quite a few after that first act.
Let me kick off the exegesis of this perfect, ballsy musical satire by noting that your ass isn’t always where it used to be. Grrizli Madams shock you already with the design, where the back of the head is the foreground and the foreground is just a pretty backdrop for filling out the back of the sleeve, and the music behind this aesthetic negative and defiance of every design norm doesn’t lag an inch behind. If the exceptional stoner influences of the past were grounded in Karma To Burn, the new dogma is still orthodoxly anchored in stoner, in the realms of non-commercial surrender to noise, distortion, cacophonies of rhythm, thundering riffs and the most incomprehensible lyrics possible (I admit that when it comes to deciphering guttural phrases, idioms and foreign-sounding tongues I’m far from fluent, and I bet that wasn’t the main reason for the genesis of the core of the record SNTNTN), and they’re still completely devoted to all of it. But on this new trip to the studio the lads dared to push the frame of expectations a little further, to inject a bit more genre playfulness into the rough, excessive, distorted vignettes of total feeling, and to plant a bit more tenderness, danceable metrics and raw brilliance into the sludge-concrete foundations, which means one beer down the hatch won’t be enough to grasp the whole thing.
SNTNTN is a listening challenge (and a musical outpouring) that opens with the atonal beauty of Azul Intuso. Fat contours of furrowed guitars drown in dreamy, effect-drenched bass lines tied in with the organic rhythm of tasty drums, and the whole thing sounds like an affective jam by Brant Bjork. In the final act of the track, elements of Queens Of The Stone Age creep into the riffs too (I’d bet that somewhere in the background I caught, for a split second, a flirt with the idea of Feel Good Hit Of The Summer, if not in the guitar riff then at least in the rhythm, but an association with a great moment of the past (or a nod to the persona of Josh Homme) is more than a good launch pad for further surrender to the pleasures of listening …). Žnarowc doesn’t let up, drilling dissonantly into cerebral waters, and with the track Chapinero Alto your attention is completely stolen. The trio writes a masterly homage to a Colombian neighborhood, where a colorful collage weaves together images of bohemians, artists hungry and thirsty for work and creation, gays and lesbians, and writers who set off down the road of restless Jack Kerouac. They also work fat, distorted shreds of brutally thundering riffs and perfect jazz suspense into the whole thing, the kind you’d otherwise credit to Mr. Bungle and not to Posavje enthusiasts (or all the more so for that very reason?). The female narrative voice sounds like the last commercial before a stampede through the dusty nooks of Bogotá, and from there we can only continue the dance with a cannibal feast. And Khukhua Kumu is (if we believe the authors’ words, so let’s say we do) the story of a man so wicked that he can only be soothed by a culinary excursion of his surroundings, who eat him for a snack (or at least a slightly heartier dinner). Papuans on this side of the Alps? Apart from the emptied seats in parliament, a march of culinary avengers would leave big unfilled patches of population vacuum in plenty of other places … Bridget has obviously fed on the bodily fluids of the American sound shamans Jane’s Addiction, because this is a state of swaying hypnotism with the Spanish-speaking voice of a guest lass, whom the lads don’t reveal on the record, guarding her like a well-guarded fortress. So let’s stay in the realm of the unnamed. You’re left speechless halfway through the track, where the distortions melt away and you drift into the mists of perfect rhythmic meditation by the immortal Kyuss, or start dissolving in fractals of melody poured into your ears by the doings of Desert Sessions, except this time genuine metal feelings are stirred into the brew of psychogenic substances. The association with Tool or A Perfect Circle is just a coincidence, right? Vitognev The Furious is another story altogether, but it doesn’t reflect different parents, since the fathers are still the same three louts. The boldness and the freedom from hang-ups about experimenting deserve praise, and thanks to them you won’t be able to gorge on this listening epic in one go. It takes a little more surrender to the challenge. Personally, I’m more than thrilled by the acoustic gem of the record, served up by the guitar melos of Spain or Andalusia in Motionless Euphoria, but since serenity is secondary, the trio impales you on a bloodied stake with the grotesque statics and brutal storminess of Transitional Kitchen. The sarcasm of political directness is either just an illusion or just the right pretext for rhythmic penetration into the center of your stoner heart. I love rhythm, bass and guitars, and what you must not forget with Grrizli Madams is their devotion to the motto: “Fewer words, more hooch (and sawdust)!”.
The culinary feast is seasoned further by a soup cube that collapses in a cyclone of sweat, bodily secretions, the potent seed of musical barbarism, unique sincere passion and uncompromising devotion to their own postulates of being and homegrown originality. Without that, Grrizli Madams would have been just another name long ago, one that conjures up a moment or two of nice memories, but this way they’re becoming more and more of a necessity in the chain of need for good, loud, uncompromising fun. Anything else would easily make the list of forbidden acts we supposedly won’t tolerate in our temples of godless heathenism, right? SNTNTN is a perfect act of me(n)tal discharge, without which the cataclysmic year 2012 would have been pretty sorry. It’s like you took too big a dose of pills to stimulate your third eye, loaded up on Viagra and started practicing tantra. Grrizli Madams are the catechists of a new musical gospel of our sub-Alpine paradise, and with artful strokes of their musical brushes they’ve once again proven that a state of avant-garde exaltation can be reached by seemingly conventional paths, without sacrificing an inch of wit, artistry or creative freedom. Nothing is as it seems, and where a thing concludes, the time comes for a new molt and a total metamorphosis. The stages of evolution so far have proven to be more than a random act of accidental blues-ing, and for the lads we can predict, with no hidden agenda or faked orgasms, a bright future!
Lineup
Gašper Prus – drums
Miha Vodušek – bass, acoustic guitar, vocals
Matej Hočevar – guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals
Production
Ruž & Grrizli Madams
Track list
1. Azul Intruso
2. Žnarowc
3. Chapinero Alto
4. Khakhua Kumu
5. Bridget
6. Vitognev The Furious
7. Motionless Euphria
8. Transitional Kitchen
9. Collapse Of The Soup Cube
