His Electro Blue Voice

Ruthless Sperm (Subpop)

17/20

Here’s an album made up entirely of songs with unattractive and duo-syllabic titles, collected under the promisingly freakish header of Ruthless Sperm. And with the opening bars of the menacing thwock and painful bounce of Death Climb, it’s instantly clear that this is a Sub Pop record through and through.

The soft shoegazey sounding name of the band is at odds with their sound. There’s nothing much blue about this Italian three piece. In fact, they’re pretty darn abominable. Album highlight Spit Dirt grows from a throttling, Moon Duo-esque drone (acquiring some monstrous gasps in its ascendency), into a curiously spacey glide, before guitars melodically mould themselves around the silver arrow at peak of this eight minute phenomenon. It’s tracks like these that made Sub Pop, and its tracks like these that continue to maintain the label’s outstanding and well-deserved reputation.

Sea Bug picks up the pace with fuzzed out riffs and yelps before the plodding bass line of Tumor infests your brain, and then The Path opens like a classic grunge anthem until it twists around itself into another space jam, eventually closing with a terrifying coda of rasping chants. Born Tired opens the door for the album’s closer Red Earth, and it’s at this point where the record loses its momentum. But that’s okay, because despite the limp finale, by this point His Electro Blue Voice have flaunted some of the most engaging, addictive and galvanised material Sub Pop have released in years.

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hiselectrobluevoice.bandcamp.com

Words: James Balmont