Once catching your breath after firing off the name of the band, the album title and sticking it into your CD playing receptacle, you are faced with two equally bewildering options; The first is to throw yourself around in what can be described as a ‘joyous maniacal fit', and the other is to run screaming out of your house, holding your poor abused and heavily bleeding ears.
‘The Plot' face you with a 23 minute LP of pure, angry-punk, spazzy-hardcore noise, and it hurts. Devoid of melody, harmony or recognisable sound, this is a slab of fuzzy pain meant only for the kids in school who were repeatedly reprimanded in the isolation unit for having ‘learning difficulties and attention span problems'. Read - psychosis and foam-mouthed violent outbursts.
To help reinforce this rather disturbed image, the CD artwork is covered in badly-scribbled Nazi imagery. It's hard to tell whether it's simply an arty political statement, or if they really are a raving bunch of skinheads. I fear the former.
There are a few moments when the screeching subsides to form some rather pleasant interludes, there's a sax player in there somewhere, tracks like ‘Drake the Fake' and ‘SLC Hunks' aren't half bad and the bass player is fantastic.
If you like Refused, you'll probably like this. Good album, but not for everyone I guess. Once you get hit in the face various times with it, you'll want to swear to your ears you'll never listen to this CD again. But you will.
