Destruction Unit: Void LP (Jolly Dream Records, 2013)
March 24, 2013 at 5:30 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Destruction Unit: Void
I had never heard of this group, but
Kristin told me to see them at SXSW and get their record for
the station, so I did. Turns out they’ve been around for over a decade and Jay Reatard and Alicja Trout both used to be in this band. When I saw them, they were playing on the outside porch of a bar on Red River (one of the main streets in Austin), in the middle of a hot day. It was pretty chaotic and I couldn’t really get a good photo from where I was standing. This LP is 6 tracks of spacey psych-punk, and a bit more out-there than I expected from when I saw them. “Evil Man” starts the album out well on a riff-heavy note, tunneling layers of guitars through a bashy rhythm. “Blame” alternates between druid-like vocals and frantic screaming, with more spaced-out riffs and crashing drums. “Druglore” is a long, wordless, beatless feedback trip, with a small, insistent guitar riff spiralling its way through an ethereal void. “Great Wall” is a fast, kind of dark thrasher, and “Exterminate” is even more furious, with vocals slathered in echo and wailing riffs. “Smoke Dreams” ends the album with another long instrumental, but instead of a beatless drone, this one starts out quiet but then kicks into a steady, repetitive riff-stormer.
The Answer Is In The Beat 
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