Photographs courtesey of Anne Irgens
While navigating round Oslo’s By Larm festival, avoiding patches of black ice and Danish reggae acts, the Quietus chances upon a new vinyl emporium The Garden Record Shop and is delighted to see that the fabulous Deathcrush are playing a live instore.
In a packed basement the noise rock trio are unveiling their latest release – out now – taking the unusual format of Deathcrush magazine, poster and flexi disc.
But that’s not the only thing they are unveiling. Åse Røyset and Linn Nystadnes the band’s joint singers/guitarists/bassists, have recruited Årabrot’s time-served sticksman, Vidar to sit behind the kit – a kit which belonged to Rod Stewart’s drummer on the ‘Do You Think I’m Sexy’ tour, no less. (While in Oslo, I had the chance to visit Emil Nikolaisen’s Malabar studio and listen to two ‘in-progress’ songs from the new Årabrot LP and seriously exciting things are developing in that camp but more on that later in the year.)
The bare concrete walls of the shop’s basement are ideally suited to the spinning, pulsing lights given off by two dream machines spinning on top of Dansette record players.
They open with new flexi disc track ‘Lesson #13 For Nanker Phelge/Fire’, which showcases a new muscularity to the band, not just in Vidar’s armour piercing snare strikes but, the clangorous, organized chaos of the guitar strafes, coming somewhere between Jesus Lizard and Babes In Toyland.
While the band’s new material is heavy on more dissonant, groove based noise disco numbers, their bubblegum aesthetic (celebrated by the Smash Hits style magazine cover) isn’t far from the surface on pop/noise tracks like ‘Strauss’ and ‘Mind Your Own Smooth Criminal’.
The flexi apparently is the first in a series of new singles and going on tonight’s gig, they’ve got numerous tracks that could be released such as Joan Jett goes speed metal of ‘Fun’, (replete with Vidar’s necrotic black metal ululations on backing vocals).
They end with two more familiar numbers ‘Lesson #1 for Snoop Dogg’ and ‘Lesson #2 for Cliff Burton’, which channel early Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch and PJ Harvey and then the adrenaline burst of ‘You Now’. Deathcrush then, still making you use a gold plated pneumatic drill as a toothbrush.
