It’s always sad losing a writer due to the increasing pressure of balancing a life with the time it takes to cover stuff. It was a particular blow when George our undisputed king of the slams had to hang up his boots leaving the rest of us to tackle the minefield of that particular genre, stumbling around in the dark to a large extent. He certainly knew his stuff and was probably more receptive to a lot of the style as well as knowledgeable about it compared to the rest of us. So, it comes to my turn to have a go and it is Canadian band Crème Flesh who are my victims with their latest platter of splatter Casablumpkin, a name apparently in reference to some kidult series Archer which I am equally ignorant of.
All this aside Slam is not the hardest genre to evaluate and there are certain things you know are going to be consistent on any release. Before the music itself you can snigger (or not) at the daft song titles and there are some doozies here referencing certain films such as ‘Laurence Of Labia,’ ‘On Her Majesties Secret Cervix’ and ‘The Pit And The Speculum,’ (ouch my sides are splitting). Once one presses play its as expected a not overlong experience of just over the half hour mark and full of lurching grooves, drums like nails hammered into a vampire’s coffin, pinch harmonics and injurious guttural vocals sounding like sounds from the animal kingdom. Vocalist Matt Hilden gurgles along unintelligibly like the best of them and the musicians give things a good workout as they hammer and churn away. You can no doubt bang your head away or lift weights along to the cranial abuse going down here and I guess the proffered likeness from the PR suggesting that this is for fans of the upper echelons of said things such as Devourment, Kraanium & Malignancy are on point.
The other thing that is always expected are the samples and I actually am a fan of these and attempting to work out what cartoon, mondo or 70’s XXX feature they are culled from. We don’t get one here till the third Alien attributed number ‘In Space No One Can Hear You Cream,’ after which they are rattled out with regularity on song intros. Rampaging Xenomorphs are musically all over this number, scuttling over the ceilings and spraying out toxic acid with flailing abandon before deliverance is issued in form of a particularly porcine vocal grotesquery.
Although I am personally quite happy to listen to the likes of Rompeprop and Torsofuck occasionally, I do find that staleness sets in fairly quickly with the newer breed of slam bands and songs all sound the same. Once the novelty has worn off, what are you left with? That is my real problem here but those more dedicated to things will no doubt be happier than the proverbial pig in shit. Once the Pussy Galore sample of ‘From Russia With Aids’ (at first I thought it was from Deep Throat) is done with, I find myself somewhat impatiently waiting for the album to end and can’t say I am in a hurry for repeated plays.
I guess for some the ingredients of Crème Flesh are full fat rather than skimmed and they don’t particularly do anything wrong, or it has to be said anything particularly politically incorrect here apart from schoolboy punning but… come back George we need you man!
(6/10 Pete Woods)
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