Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Album Review - The Megaphonic Thrift - Decay Decoy

This review is part of the "Over Flow" Review Series. For various reasons these past reviews were not published anywhere else. I am tagging them as "Overflow Reviews" and may add some extra information after if needed but I will keep the ratings and reviews just as I originally wrote them. Enjoy:
The Megaphonic Thrift
Decay Decoy
**** out of *****

If the worse thing I can say about a band is that they are a knock off of one of the most innovative groups from the last 25 years then that isn’t the worst criticism in the world.  This is the case with the Norwegian noise rock outfit, The Megaphonic Thrift’s first full length release Decay Decoy.  Sure, they may have been born bred and raised on Sonic Youth’s expansive art-rocking pallet, containing both male/female lyrics and countless excursions into the unknown, yet there is unmistakable feedback-y goodness present from the jump to the last fadeout. 

“Talks Like The Weed King” is an upbeat duet that seems barely contained in it’s 3:20 run time, while the repetitive beats of “Neues” are trance like and “You Saw The Silver Line” contains enchanting jangling strumming.  Ferocious drum rolls and fuzzed guitars on “Candy Sin” along with the distorted bass on “Queen of Noise” shatter the amps and pump the energy to cathartic levels.  There are some down moments such as “Sister Joan” and there isn’t an obvious standout track but the quartet from Europe certainly have southern Manhattan flowing throw their six strings and will hopefully keep experimenting in the future.  


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This band is right up my alley.  While it isn't world altering or super unique, the group are obviously gifted when it comes to shifting sound and feedback via pedals and noise builds and I love that so much.  I really liked their demo last year, and loved them live.  While this is no major step forward you get more of the same with the full length which shows their obvious Sonic Youth love and ramps it up.  Hey, I love Sonic Youth, so me and this album are friends.  It may not be for everyone, but if you can get down with SY, Dino Jr, My Bloody Valentine and that ilk odds are you will really dig on The Megaphonic Thrift.

Some Vids:
Opening track on the album "The Undertow":
Here is the Video I took of them Live @ Santos Party House:

Some Acoustic:

1 comment:

  1. This album is coming out in North America finally on March 8th 2011 on the Canadian label Sonic Unyon

    ReplyDelete