Menfolk
Beast one / Man nil
PlayRec
There's nothing at all conventional about this Danish quartet and it's for this reason that they will appeal to pretty much anyone who likes their music to force them to think once in a while. It's not that Menfolk are overly complex, or even that they're difficult to understand; rather they are just quirky as hell right across the board. Odd song structures benefit from an odd overall sound, and this is mainly down to the band's ability to think outside the box in all aspects of their craft. Norway's maestros of all things bizarre -- Virus -- spring to mind on occasion, although Menfolk don't offer quite the David Lynch-type headfuck that Czral and his cohorts manage to muster. Instead they combine the essence of that eerie complexity and blend it with a more simplified structure akin to Rage Against the Machine and Fugazi. A simplified complexity, if you will. That might sound like a bit of a contradiction in terms, but after one spin of "Beast one / Man nil" it all makes sense. Sort of. Hell, these guys don't even approach instrumentation in a conventional way, opting to bookend the crunchy drive of one guitar with the pummelling detonation of two basses. It definitely works wonders for the sound which, while hinting at the aforementioned acts, comes across like a punked-up Primus meets a funked-up Fudge Tunnel. While the musicianship is spot on the money, this is quite a noisy release, where guitar feedback, although kept in the background, serves as a deliberate structural component. If there's one gripe about this album though, it's that the passages where single notes (rather than chords) are played on the guitar sound a bit too watery. It's a shame, since the chords are absolutely monstrous. A great second album with little in the way of flaws and heaps in the way of punk attitude.
- John Norby
