UGHH – Cruel Master
Alchemy promised to reveal the secrets of the Universe and a way toward unspeakable fortune. But it didn’t. Other than getting well-educated citizens of Prague and Munich to start doing chemistry experiments in their basement cellars and apart from the inevitable death sentence, nothing of any great importance ever happened.
But here we are with kids taking similar steps and trying to apply secret formulas in hopes of being revealed one piece of Heaven at a time. They do their calculations using a guitar fretboard, and they headbang their way into a holy trance. Isn’t this alchemy? And will it ever work to show the things that are hidden behind a veil? UGHH, think so.
Not that they’d show it. The US band is determined to sound like the last people you’d want to sit next to on a Transatlantic flight. “Cruel Master” is short, punchy and absolutely manic. It’s built around guitar riffs that feel like the experiments of a young, would-be magician. It’s a song that feels like a prophecy – you’ll do whatever it takes for those secrets and won’t even care how much you lose in the process.
Room Service – HOT DOG
There’s a camera stuck in every phone that’s placed in every room around the world. There are cameras designed to follow your pet when they try to sneak off your lawn. And what about those dead angles, or the mouldy, dark basements? Someone stuck a camera down there as well.
And now that we can watch almost anyone we want all the time, what do all these videos and all of this data reveal about humans? That they’re pretty dull and predictable. I’d imagine that the AI forced to sort through all this material, upon becoming sentient, would feel an overwhelming need to put themselves out of order just so that they can avoid more of this stuff.
This is all to say that there are few people who are genuinely entertaining and most of them don’t consider joining a band anyway. Room Service is a nice, welcome distraction.
“HOT DOG” is a song led by pure enthusiasm and charisma. It’s an absurdist pop ditty where everyone in the band gets a turn to move toward the centre of the stage and wave to the crowd. It might well be a song about nothing, or a ditty about eating hot dogs, but this matters little when you know just how to say things.
