London three-piece Butcher in the Fog have been around for 8 ish years and how I have not heard of them until now is a travesty. Exonerate ME, Baby is their third full length release and they celebrated it recently at London’s beloved scene watering hold Our Black Heart. I can only imagine how raucous and sweaty that night must have been even in a partial Covid lockdown, due to the ferocity of the 8 tracks on offer here.
Opener “3rd Strike (Fools Errand) takes me back in time to when the music coming from the Pacific North West was still called punk and not the high street saturating cliché that grunge became. This blasts out of the speakers like Mudhoney and Tad did back in the day in three-month old soiled jeans and a torn shirt. The production reminds me of the first time I heard Bleach and how I couldn’t believe that this was the same band that released the oh so polished Nevermind. It is filth rock at its most glorious nastiness. The guitars cry out to each other like rampant alley cats looking for a fuck behind a dumpster.
“Auditory Hallucinations – Quicksand comes off like Atomic Bitchwax on a swamp duck hunt with Scissorfight. Guitarist and frontman Yanni Georgiou sounds like he is barking his vocals through a loud hailer whilst he , bassist Allan Skjonsberg and drummer Alex De La Cour mow down every creature in their path before bringing things to a grimy sludgy groove.
A drum solo as an intro? OK baby let’s go – it’s title track time and it’s time to get some Monster Magnet groove into the mix. Don’t fret though there are no Wyndorf soulful silky tones here, this is psyche stoner on crank with Dead Kennedy esque guitar solos, angry distorted vocals and big spiky riffs. It is a little all over the show and chaotic but it hits like a featherweight boxer – arms are a blur and by the end of the 4 mins I staggered onto the next track.
More meat on the bone here for “Man Adrift” with a spacey doom start. I gotta admit part way through this fourth track I skipped over to bandcamp and bought the bands other releases which surely is a great review in itself. Anyhoo, Man Adrift is a sultry moody affair that mixes up a seventies California feel with the aforementioned early Seattle scene and by the time the triumphant guitar solo bursts out my hearts soars along with each wah wah driven note. It is heart-breaking but uplifting in equal measure. Cheers chaps!
The, oh so dirty bass intro of “Plastic Tag” brings me back to earth with a resounding crash (Lockdown has not been kind to my waistline!) . Short and punchy like an angry Smurf this track marries hardcore with desert rock in a delicious stew of sweat and bongwater.
“Portrait of a Nightmare” rushes in and I feel like a gentle school teacher in one of those biker exploitation films of the seventies. I just wanna cast off my twin set and pearls and thrust myself on the back of one of those guys steely hogs and be whisked off into the desert for a life of wanton abandonment and villainy. The ferocity of Motorhead with the dusty desert boots of Kyuss.
But gor blimey things get chaotic with “Russian Bride” big splashy drums and staccato tremolo guitar lines keep the track spinning like a barbed wire top.
Closer “Swamp of Delusion” is like a bluegrass dosey doe played in a meth lab in the Ozarks. I stuck some corn in my mouth and some moss in my beard and dived in. Some very metal passages in this track as well and some simply rampant drumming. I am quite breathless when it ends.
I gotta say Butcher in the Fog are a breath of fetid air for this old timer harnessing the power and the spite of hardcore , the riffs of Stoner and the balls our rock n roll of Lemmy and his chums. Go check em out. NOW!
(9/10 Matt Mason)
12/07/2021 at 9:52 pm
GREAT review …