Cherubs: Short of Popular

Trance Syndicate Records

Doling out gloriously one-dimensional punishment is what Austin's uncuddly Cherubs do best, and this hodgepodge of 7-inches, comp tracks, and crap the band actually thought twice about releasing the first time should scald even the most desensitized among you.

“Carjack Fairy” and “Zip-Up Boots” best represent the Cherubs' grotesque aesthetic, combining intestinal bass growl, impenetrable walls of Flipper-style noise guitar, and shrill vocal wails from devil-worshipping ex–Ed Hall drummer Kevin Whitley. The headache starts with “Pixie Stix” and doesn't let up until the tenth track, “Dazy,” which is atonal enough to induce vertigo but is also, relatively speaking, a ballad. Whitley sounds touchingly shy for the first time in Cherubs history, unsure of all that vocal-exposing open air, offering delicately, “You used to make me suck your panties.”

The sensitive stuff continues with the creeped-out, nearly melodic “Sinatras,” and after Whitley's done threatening you in the closing track, “Baconfat,” there's just the slightest hint of melancholic regret in the solo-guitar chord pattern—the same one that begins the CD. (Nice touch, dirtbags.) But you probably won't make it that far in, anyway, unless there's something seriously amiss in the old noggin. Do have that checked out.

—John Pecorelli

Alternative Press magazine