Sex Swing resurface much like a dubious stain that refuses to be scrubbed from your best pair of trousers. As with said stain, they’re greasy, flaky at the edges and smell a bit funny – gross, yes, but also arousing the aberrant urge to give them a little lick when no one else is looking.
While the degenerate slobbering and globular riffs root them in the same gene pool as Chrome, God Bullies and Butthole Surfers, their ability to artfully slosh together different outlier influences – sludge, psych, post-punk, kosmische, grunge – speaks to compatriots closer to home. Hey Colossus, Gnod and Bloody Head all spring to mind on this front: bands who might wield their sonics differently, but ultimately share the same rogue, wandering spirit.
The band can deliver killer bass rumbles and dense, wet-sand riffing with the best of ‘em, but this gluey, Melvins-esque heaviness is at its absolute best when drawn endlessly out to the point it begins to warp at the edges. Frontman Dan Chandler is core to this, variously sounding incredulous, furious and utterly bewildered as he delivers cracked tales in a mumblefuck manner that mushes together David Eugene Edwards, Mark E. Smith and Don Van Vliet. Saxophonist Colin Webster, meanwhile, serves as the band’s secret weapon, providing everything from Saints-y melody to full-on Fun House meltdowns.
These elements coagulate brilliantly on tracks like ‘Boten, Route 13’, wherein freeform sax wheedle becomes indistinguishable from vocal lines and Chandler’s near-gurgled “La La La La La La La La” comes across like the sneering deconstruction of a prime pop trope. Elsewhere, ‘Special Economic Zone’ sees a tricksy, Botch-esque riff turned into a knuckleheaded, hyper-repetitious workout, while standout track ‘Wild Peacock’ closes the album with a sick-making white-out that feels both endless and resoundingly final. Despite being an album of highlights, Golden Triangle is, more than anything, something to wallow in: a giddy expansion of sound, and a dissolute dissolution of whatever barriers the band hadn’t already trodden down into the muck.
