Clutch Cargo
Colon Bruising Sounds
Hot Link Records

Now I dig chemical warfare as much as the next guy, actually probably a bit more, since I spent a good deal of my childhood fantasizing about WWI bayonets and the amorous stretches of trenches, lovingly carved with sweet blood rivulets and spades, but the emminent duel of gas-mask logo weilding Texas punks is looming all eerie and custardy like a mustard gas on the horizon, fluffed up behind some sorta norther.

And while I spent most of one summer back in 1996 (or maybe 1997?) putting up with West Texans At the Drive-In at my house, lovingly trading nicknames as we slept on the floor of the only cool room in the heat-filth house of mine (theirs: "We Sleep with our Pants On" and "At the Love-In", mine: "Three O'Clock Erection") and making Stevie Nicks jokes with clucking Pachuco voices in the waking hours, I am naturally more inclined to give them bragging rights to their iconoclastic crimson and black glass-eyed gear.

But I must admit that as of now I am teetering abit, perhaps my ballast is thrown by lungs chockful o'burning chunks, and leaning towards these new boys from North Texas, with their masks of yeller and black (although the filter looks a spot too much like a pepper shaker). I could also do without the red herring riff that starts off Schizo, but the chord changes and tempo shifts are well-crafted and plotted, giving tracks like Fingercuffs and Loverkiller an emotional charge and stomp lacking from lotta the baggy-pant lackeys I've suffered through recently, not unlike a stilleto-heeled black con to a nasty lil nutria, so messy and alive.

Copyright © 2000 Andy Beta