GONE BALD
demo
CD-R /
Interstellar??
Already
the first song blew me away: “tango” is the perfect mixture between the
hard-hitting, edgy guitarriffs of Black Flag and the raunchy, rough blues of
Firewater and even the voice swings from Henry Rollins to Todd A and back.
Yes, I know, I shouldn’t be comparing bands with other bands, and
definitely, Gone Bald have enough power and energy to stand as their own,
but I guess, with bands such as Black Flag and Firewater, no one is really
angry about the comparison (except for the greatest of egomaniacs – I
can’t tell if Gone Bald are, let’s see). I can’t tell you anything
about the band actually and searching the internet has proven fruitless. It
wouldn’t have been that futile if I had a hair problem, but that is a
whole different story. See, Richie wrote the name of the band and the name
of the seven songs on here, which clock in at close to one hour(!), on the
case of the CD-R and nothing else. Yep, that’s punkrock. Actually, I
don’t need anything more. Any further information about this CD is
superfluous in the respect, that it has become one of my favourites and it
couldn’t get better. Please write to him at http://www.interstellarrecords.at
to get more info, especially on how to get this CD / CD-R.
One
more thing before I rave on about the music again: there are still some
people who go on about how they won’t review CD-Rs or don’t like to
listen to CD-Rs. Well, you are pretentious, arrogant fools in my book. Just
like the audiotape a few years ago, CD-Rs are the best way to spread music
nowadays. If you insist on getting a case and a cover and a real CD then I
get the notion that you want something to sell to your 2nd-Hand-Dealer,
which makes you a greedy asshole. On the other hand, you’d be missing out
on great stuff such as “Gone Bald” here, which makes you a stupid fool.
Nuff said ‘bout that.
This
CD-R will leave you breathing hard. Right after the first track has given
you a thorough blow-through, the pace sets to a little more laid-back,
though no less neurotic, distressed and angry. In other words: everything
you ever liked about noise-rock. This band is also great on structuring
songs and putting a lot of dynamics in there. “adict”, the second song,
(if I read Richie’s handwriting correctly) is almost nine-minutes long and
none of them boring. They’ll start with an intro, then hit you over the
head with one of those harsh guitarriffs, connect this to another one, and
so on. On the third track “boat” the distorted voice is close to early
Cop Shoot Cop or Distorted Pony and when the singer cries “Come with me /
come with me” you’d advise anyone with a sound mind better not to abide.
Track three somehow loses itself in a broken guitar/drum-pattern, which gets
more and more fractured, until it seems to stop completely, the listener
thinking: what the heck is going on until – exactly at the right moment
– the band breaks into a completely different song (though we are still on
track three) but it fits. Yes, Gone Bald are good at putting technicality to
work for emotionality.
