Shock rock had its heyday this decade past, and thankfully, has not returned in the popular culture with the vehement need for attention that it lusted for in years. It can be argued that we are no longer shocked by these cries for notice – the usual suspects of sex and drugs have mercilessly been beaten into our mainstream lives; and as a result, they no longer serve up the gasps they once bathed in. Enter Pervertable Tongues – right away, the name gives you an expectant idea of their sound. They are “the sound of Avant Pop…the fury of the working class…the distaste of mainstream convetions…” – now, each of these could probably be argued for or against the band, but I’ll leave the political and theoretical rhetoric out of the review.
To give full disclosure – I have short patience for Avant-garde pieces of art in any form – in my mind, you can live and create outside of the mainstream without completely turning your back on it – see “Radiohead”. Many times, I feel that artists use the word as an excuse more than as a form – they can’t play very well, so they play noise and slap an artsy name on it to impress those who will never listen. Now, you can take a form, and play with it until that form no longer resembles itself, but with numerous songs mentioning the word ‘rape’ Pervertable Tongues don’t impress me; but they seem more like a beginning writer who thinks having his characters curse a lot will make them seem more real, when, in reality, this only serves to show 1. How unrealistic the characters actually are, and 2. How naïve the writer is who conceived such characters. There is a time and a place, and if the foul language and artsy takes on the modern world serve the character, or in this case, the song, then so be it – I applaud you’re authenticity and your fresh viewpoint. Unfortunately, the constant brow beatings of the unfortunate, and the over-abused feminist theme on this debut “Syntactical Makeover”, push it to the bottom of my pile.
On the bright side this is music, and the punk stylings fit the trite subject matter. There are splatterings of very cool vocal effects and lots of neat little melody and counter melody going on. A+ for the noisy punk reverberated vocals and pounding guitar lines. D for the subject matter.
