“SLOPPY YET TIGHT” – FRESH PUNK ROCK STYLINGS FROM TEXAS NEWCOMERS Ghetto Ghouls

Spiky and unforgiving punk rock that harks back to our erstwhile 70s/80s punk heroes...

 

Ghetto Ghouls – LP – Self-Titled – released by Monofonus Press on 8 April 2014

Ghetto Ghouls’s self-titled first album is frenetic hi-tempo garage rock n roll from start to finish.  All 25 minutes of it.  Hailing from Austin, Texas, we are told these garage-punk youngsters “have played together since the age 14”.  It certainly sounds like it.  Label Monofonus tells us the album “was recorded in 4 hours … the vocals are live and there is only one overdub (a background vocal) on the whole thing”. So, these fellows are serious about their punk chops. The name comes from the 1980’s film “The Exterminator”; the Ghetto Ghouls being a group of vicious New York thugs that end up on the wrong side of the film’s eponymous vigilante.  Me neither - but no matter, as in any event Ghetto Ghouls have more under the hood than your average brutalist rock n rollers. Reminiscent at times of Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Frank Black, and many others besides (the vocals on “Roofshit” could even pass for Deftones’s Chino Moreno?) – Ghetto Ghouls’ album takes a few sparing but choice ingredients and crafts them into likeably brash and boisterous downer punk.  And the album has certainly got pace – start listening and by five minutes in you’ve already got to song four. The fantastic final song “Simple C” builds a simple spiky bass riff into impassioned yelling of –– well, something, but it sounds pretty great.  And, at double the length of most other songs on the album, this correspondent does wonder whether Ghetto Ghouls should try their hand at a few more of these more structured pieces.  But what does this correspondent know!  They are already doing exactly what they want, and it is certainly worth a listen. Ghetto Ghouls are: Corey Anderson, Dan LeVine, Ian Rundell, and Garrett Hadden. 7/10 http://ghettoghouls.bandcamp.com/ https://monofonuspress.com/store/ghetto-ghouls-2  

COMMENTS