t first, the Finnish group Giddy Motors seem like another one of these dime a dozen post-punk tribute bands. There’s loud, weird guitars, shouted vocals that don’t make any sense, drums falling all over the place, basses being plunked messily, all sorts of things that are pretty standard nowadays. These guys do it better, though.


A snare roll begins “Magmaniac”, punctuated rather strangely with some shouting in the background. The snare pops and some obnoxious bass, untrustworthy drums and distorted guitar squeak around themselves for a while. The guitar does some bendy kind of thing- the maelstrom continues. A voice comes into focus, talking about nothing in particular. Gaverick de Vis, the guitarist and singer for the band, has a very distinctive voice that he manages well.


And sometimes he turns these nonsensical lyrics into anthems. ‘Turn my head inside-out’ he demands in the beginning of “Cranium Crux”. This song has a particularly strong hold on the tension between chaos and structure with the band controlling their rises and falls expertly, not only at the beginning and ending of what could be called the verses and choruses, but within smaller phrases. This effect makes the song seem less like the work of disjointed art school dropouts and more like the work of a group of painters, studying each shade and noting its importance in the whole composition.


The most distinct instrument within all of this delirium is the drums. While the guitars may be grinding out chords messily, almost atonally, the vocals may be shouted gibberish, with the saxophone providing nothing more tangible than a distorted squeal, there’s always the percussion. “Hit Cap” is an expert example of the percussion’s key role within the album. Bongos are added to the drummer’s arsenal here and they provide a very strong backing for the sax squeals and de Vis’ wailing. The whole thing comes out like the Fall with a more desperate Mark E. Smith on the microphone (albeit with nothing intelligible to say, but by gum, he wants to say it).


While the album is pretty uniformly destructive, therein lies the interest. There’s a lot of different sounds- from massive noise destruction to disjointed quietness (“Venus Medallist”). If you like this kind of post-spazz, jazz, hardcore, whatever, you’ll love this. Even if you have a problem with all of the arty pretension, there’s some great drums at the very least.