SLUDGEFEAST Baby You Fuck Me Up (Seriously Groovy)
The fact that on this single Sludgefeast torch four songs in five minutes - the kind of workrate that would exhaust even the short attention spans of bands such as Hsker D, Minutemen and Wire - probably tells you all you need to know. They play distorted high-speed Stooges/Ramones homages with lots of screaming, rather less melody, a smattering of soul and some unexpected harmonica and brass interventions. No more, no less, but at least it can't be said to outstay its welcome.
SLUDGEFEAST Rock 'N' Roll (Fuzzbox)With the arrival of their debut album "Rock 'N' Roll" Sludgefeast reveal themselves to be another product of the overactive imagination of South coast low-fi svengali James Barnard (see also No Wings Fins Or Fuselage and Inhaler). Since the last time we met Sludgefeast have grown themselves two extra drummers, which even for music as tribal as theirs seems a little excessive. But as just another entry in the Sludgefeast catalogue of self-mythology it seems kind of fitting: consider that the packaging of "Rock 'N' Roll" contains an exhaustive chronological listing of computer games, from "Pong" to the present, slogans like "Keyboard free recording, rock guitars only" and the instructions supplied with the Big Muff effects pedal.
Oh, and there's some music here as well, although not very much of it. "Rock 'N' Roll" contains sixteen tracks, which are neatly dispensed with in 18 minutes and 37 seconds. They’re called stuff like "Give It Some Shit Man" and "1971 (I've Got It Goin' On)", and are about as conceptually simple as it's possible for a song to be without it floating off into the ether: riff (big) + distortion (lots) + words (few) = your average Sludgefeast ditty. It makes the first Ramones album look like "Tales From Topographic Oceans", and as an exercise in brutal simplicity it's admirable, if not deeply musical. Of course, in a perfect world Sludgefeast will have broken up - or at least retreated to their encyclopaedic study of arcade games - by the time you read this, because to create a second album would seem to be the ultimate betrayal of the principles espoused here. (Is the world an unhappier place for the lack of a second Sex Pistols album?) But just for the moment, the invitation printed on the CD to "Fuck it up with the Feast" looks strangely inviting, if you can stop worrying about the morning after for long enough.