Asylums 'Killer Brain Waves'
Anti-boredom Anthems for the "information genocide" age, and an album of the year contender.
'Killer Brain Waves' by Asylums (Cool Thing Records) 29th July 2016
Multiple formats (pink glow vinyl included!) available to pre-order from THIS LINK.
Asylums live up to the title of their album track; ‘Born To Not Belong’. If you need an antidote to the world on the news then 'Killer Brain Waves' is perfection. Riot punk brilliance to penetrate your mind with electro shock rock treatment from the moment mountain sized, laser beam opener, ‘Second Class Sex’ races in and lights the fuse.
Detonation personified, Asylums channel passionate fury and DIY suss into resourceful outburst, art powered creativity and thoughtful (aural/visual) instigation, that mirrors the mechanics of what was the major music industry (minus the corporate cock suck) to produce songs you should have heard on day time radio, like ‘Missing Persons’, and music fans delight.
Via their Cool Thing Records activism, this band have dripped injections of happiness into our lives through full on ferocity like ‘The Death Of Television’, played kick ass gigs, given support to other bands and made innovative videos that make you grin and rock yer head back and forth like you’re in, well, an asylum.
A variety show of guitar licks herald the phrase, “Ooh I love this one!”, like when moshtastic move monsters, ‘I’ve Seen Your Face In A Music Magazine’ and ‘Necessary Appliances’ kick off. The blood rush of this LP is driven by a tight but grungy musicality, streaked liberally with frantic lunacy that sounds like a space cadet on acid crashing into the sun while having the time of their life singing along. Loudly.
The establishment’s pantomime politics are currently waging anarchy in the UK. Sometimes you need earworms that drown out the sound of what passes as reality. With the sound of furious aggression, as per ‘Slacker Shopper’, these songs battle the fall out of our every day survival, with defiant, massive noisy anthems for the dystopian age.
Influences galore here, but Asylums have forged their own sounds to make your heart beat faster, as if you were experiencing their live show (a cirque de berserk). Having been magnetised by the fireworks pulsing from both Mansun and Mars Volta gigs, there’s an element of that which causes Asylums addiction. An urgent legacy to the music world, they have no typical fan.
‘Monosyllabic Saliva, ‘Sunday Commuters’ and ‘Joy In A Small Wage’ prove that Asylums never lose sight of a cosmic guitar lick, a true vocal or a rhythm equivalent to a pasting from a boxing champ, at any tempo.
‘Killer Brain Waves’ is a potential greatest hits collection of raw substance above tepid style, with an international sound. ‘Bad Influence’, a case in point, which could have come from either side of the Atlantic.This side of the pond is now a laughing stock nation, but you can’t deny that between Grime and the newer wave of Rock, we sure know how to take up the reins of punk’s legacy and twist it into something new, fresh, NOW and so importantly, FUN.
‘Wet Dream Fanzine’ is simultaneously retro and future psychaedelia, pumped with adrenaline. The spirit of TheZineUK’s collective of uniqulture has been infected. We have joined Asylums anonymous, and now this debut album is the icing on the cake.
Never mind Never Mind The Bollocks, Asylums are the dogs bollocks. An exciting, intelligent, articulate, essential aural roller coaster ride without a seatbelt, ‘Killer Brain Waves’ is up there with ‘Tracks Of Wire’ by deux furieuses, as a classic rock album of both 2016, and the last 40 years. An album for life long love, it's a 10/10 from me.
Caffy St Luce