There’s a lot to unpick here when dissecting this, the third album from Bunuel, a supergroup of sorts from the malcontent, the ostracised, the damaged, the put upon, the depressed, the outliers, the three percent, the curious, the avant-garde and the distrusting. I for one had never heard of this San Francisco/Italian band before, flying well below any perceived radar I might have for the down and the dirty and it maybe says more about me then the band, when you have missed a band that are so persuasive, interesting, repellent, and downright confusing from a genre perspective. But isn’t this what music should be all about? To confound, to sit you on your ass and ask you a question about YOUR relevance and your place in the world.

Bunuel, named after the legendary Italian film auteur Luis Bunuel, (think razor cut eyeball and you’ll know who I am talking about) are comprised of Italian trio Xabier Iriondo (Afterhours), Andrea Lombardini and Francesco Valente (Snare Drum Exorcism and Lume). They are joined on vocals by the enigma that is Eugene S. Robinson of noise terrorists Oxbow. With two albums in their collective satchel, I’m unable to necessarily comment of their previous works but can attest, that ‘Killers Like Us’ is a challenging listen, but like all ‘good’ music, so it should be. This isn’t an album you can put on in the background whilst you work on a spreadsheet that shows the decline in subscription sales of Carp Monthly. This collection of sounds wouldn’t do justice to the word incongruous if you slapped it on during a high-end drinks party in an orangery to mark the fifth anniversary of your recovery from typhoid. It requires, ne demands your attention.

Unless you’re dead (well you wouldn’t be reading this if you were, unless you’re a particularly committed music loving ghost and have taken the time to traverse spectral plains) you’d be familiar with Eugene S. Robinson (MMA prize fighter, writer of an instructional book on the art of fighting and the owner of the gun that adorns the front cover of this album etc.) He is legend as lead singer of noise terrorists Oxbow. Themselves a challenging and confrontational band of various musical influences that range from Slint, Shellac, Neurosis but have also acted as influences on those bands, coalescing as they do into a maelstrom of angular slicing guitars, pumped up Bonham drums and Robinson’s gruff and delicate spoken word interludes finessed with sharp barks, growls and vocal sweetness’s all packaged into a combustible and fragrant amuse bouche. Having seen Oxbow, supporting Sumac a few years ago, he is a terrifyingly frontman, an absorbing physical bag of twitching malevolence that lends the twisting, turning organised chaos behind him into a smooth paste of hate.

Robinson brings this same unhinged musicality, depth, and power to this album and indeed band. As the tracks spill into your ears like the liquidised remains of a hit and run victim, guitars swoon, sweep and cut swathes of bitter tasting corn and force them into your ears and throat. The vocals, obsequious, sweet, and sour, the soundtrack to your worst moments and your sweetest of wet dreams. A spoken word book written in the language of hate and spite. It has elements of Fugazi in its freeform approach, the aforementioned Shellac in its metallic, regimental swinging rhythms. It’s like a heavily medicated man of the cloth, a disgraced preacher conducting a sermon where the church house band is comprised of members of The Dirty Three, Black Sabbath and Cathedral.

It’s a filthy brew of angular, grungy, blackened post rock guitars, served with a soupcon of smouldering jazz and atmospheric keyboards that build the sermons to a continuous and consistently horrifying denouement. This is not the soundscape to be walking in if you’re feeling a little blue. It’s desperately desolate but curiously it also has moments of hope, in the faster, punkier interludes that are all beautifully captured in a warm, immediate production that’s the equivalent of being stood at the very front of the stage, standing cheek to jowl with the band, leaving your ears bleeding and your mind blended into a pink, stringy, lumpy soup. It’s going to take a few more listens to really get to the heart of this album, but I don’t think it matters how many times you listen to this album, I don’t think you’re supposed to be able to make sense of it, I don’t think the intention is to let you into their circle of trust, I don’t think Bunuel give two much of a fuck if you like them or understand their manifesto. This is clever, challenging, blunt, artful, complicated, coarse, unpalatable, and delicious music that delivers artful spoonsful of musical ambrosia.

(9/10 Nick Griffiths)

https://www.facebook.com/Bunuelband

https://profoundlorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/killers-like-us