Aristotle believed that surrounding an embryo with numerous types of cheese in turn produced varying personalities; some soft and foolish, others hard and obdurate. This is, obviously, complete gumpf but, if London-based noise-schlongs Dethscalator had developed in vitro next to a block of cheese, without a doubt it would have been Limburger – a face-crippling and delicious pongfest, fermented with the same bacterium that causes human feet to stink.
I first encountered Dethscalator at the always-excellent Supersonic Festival three years ago. Their mould-ridden walls of feedback and menacing lumber were as disturbing as a colonic irrigation mishap conducted by Dr Crippen. Bottling the stench of bands from typically-noisy record labels such as Skin Graft (Shorty, Colossamite,) and Amphetamine Reptile (Hammerhead, Melvins and, most notably, Unsane) they created a wonderful hybrid of artificially-selected noise-rock pigfuckery, with extra black pudding.
Since forming in 2008, they’ve spat out a split 12" with Hey Colossus, almost broke their own balls organising Hobaken festival and now, finally, Racial Golf Course, No Bitches is their debut album (which comes with a free golf-tee because they “found out you can buy 500 golf tees with Dethscalator printed on them for £30."). In just 34 minutes, the listener is trampled by a seal-clubbing rhythm section, doom-dusted slop-riffs and the unhinged vocal delivery of a crunked-up Oliver Reed suffering from a serious case of catarrh.
‘Singer’ Dan Chandler’s apparent influences include Brian Blessed, a gout-inflicted big toe and The Thrown Ups (another AmRep chaos emerald) who often doused their audience in oysters. Fry these in some lungbutter with Irreversible‘s brutal fire extinguisher face-obliteration scene, plus a dash of sludge beefcakes Eyehategod, and you’re pretty close to Chandler’s aural-vom. Not unlike David Lambeth Yow, he is mostly incoherent and garbled yet, it matters not what he sings, but how. His slurring is recurrently mutated through a delay-pedal, greasing a layer of deranged vocal-echoes over the bloated fuzz, to great effect.
Every inch of possible space on this record is overflowing with humming noise, every noise itself freakishly contorted. The monster menhir-riffs of ‘It’s What They Call The Clubhouse, Arsehole’ and ‘Shit Village’, are so crunch-laden, they properly wander into stoner-doom terrain. But it’s not all slow, chuggathons on RGCNB; it dangles the carrot of hardcore abrasion (‘Midnight Feast’), excretes lengthy chunks of musically-devoid static (‘Grotto Crank’) and even deploys psychedelic flanging (‘Internet Explorer and Friends.’) When looped distortion (or in the case of ‘Felt Leg’, just the same chord over and over) is this satisfying, the need for a chorus is null. And, thus, there are none. Frequently glistening with invention and humour, this album effortlessly lifts Dethscalator far beyond the realms of noise-rock-by-numbers.
Much like the record’s cover (a hentai nightmare of dick-plants and Burgess Shale teratoids), this accomplished LP is absurdly unsettling and indicates the need for a long course of cognitive behavioural therapy. Yet, I hope these sumbitches never receive such help, as their output truly is an intensely refreshing cup of cholera-tainted shitwater.
