Maybe you’re not a fan of the name Meatwound. Maybe it’s just a little too… eh… Meatwound-esque. But after hearing Largo, the band’s follow-up to their horror of a debut, Addio, you can rest assured that any revulsion you feel when hearing the name is blown up ten-fold when you listen to the Tampa quartet’s music.
Featuring an ex-member from combatwoundedveteran, you would maybe expect this to be some spazzy screeching. But while the record is filthy enough to give you cholera, it’s a fuckfest of bass-powered noiserock and feedback-as-riffage. Something like Coalesce covering Daughters, or maybe it’s the other way around, but not even that really gets at the guts of this stuff.
Here is a taste: “Reproduction Blues” is as blunt and addictive as the remaining six tracks on the album, a bath-salted cruise through some rhythmic, unforgiving wasteland. And if you’re wondering what all the screaming is about, here is vocalist Daniel Shook explaining lyrics like “How many is enough and how do we feed these/unnecessary things/with their crying sounds and their whining holes”:
Fundamentalists and politicians don’t like abortions. They also don’t like birth control or sex education. If you honestly want to stop abortions, those things are proven to reduce abortions more effectively than prayer or highway billboards. It’s almost like they want to keep the world stepping over endless unwanted babies.
Round about 23 years ago, Initial State made an LP and the song Feast has stuck with me ever since. The first line: “You would bring another into the vile machine/One more mouth among the billions to hang agape in need” I think it was the first song I heard that was specifically about overpopulation.
Largo drops on May 12th from Magic Bullet Records, and you can either pre-order the purple vinyl 12″ or just go digital; listen below and pick your poison wisely.
