SLAUGHTERHOUSE IS OUR ALBUM PICK OF THE WEEK
The ambitious Ty Segall, who earlier this year promised three separate LPs for 2012, has so far made good on his word. His second effort, Slaughterhouse, follows in the footsteps of last month’s Hair with White Fence, and features—you guessed it, his touring band, for eleven tracks of frenzied chaos: plugged-in and amped-up to the max.
The album opens with a sound akin to a buzz sander duking it out with a table saw, gnawing at the listener’s ears like so many other power tools, before an abrupt segue into a rambling rodeo of guitar noise. Elements of heavy metal bombast seem to comprise a large portion of the record’s overall tone, by Segall’s own admission, even bordering on “evil space rock.” While the California-native hasn’t altogether abandoned his back catalogue’s trademark garage sound this time around, it can hardly be described as anything but a significant departure. Does it miss the mark?
The foursome end their violent rendition of the classic Captain Beefheart/Bo Diddley “Diddy Wah Diddy” with an appropriately ad-libbed proclamation: “We don’t know what we’re doing.”
