Review Summary: Couch Slut's debut is an impressive foray into the darker, dirtier side of hardcore
If there’s one thing to be said of Couch Slut, it’s that they're consistent in their aesthetic. From the blowjob depicting “smut art” cover that made the process of printing and sending the record out a massive pain (resulting in many people getting their record months late, myself included), to the explicit track names that conjure up some seriously disturbing images (“Split Urethra Castle”), Couch Slut certainly aren’t preoccupied with the nicer things in life. Which is why it’s appropriately dark for
My Life As A Woman to open with the mission statement “I wanna talk about, all the dirty, little girl things”.
Whether that statement is fulfilled or not is hard to tell, as Couch Slut’s vocalist twists her lyrics into maniacal howls, banshee screams and venomous curses over a wall of noise that leaves little decipherable. What can be made out is unsurprisingly ferocious, with “Lust Chamber” giving us a taste of whatever “My Life as a Woman” must entail as “I’m making a point!” is roared over animalistic cries of pain.
The instrumentation dwells somewhere in the space between hardcore and noise rock, the band aptly wielding frenetic riffs punctuated with squeals of feedback and filth. Mid-paced fuzzy riffs provide the pace for most of the songs, leaving the lead guitar to occasionally dabble in weirdly bright and melodic (yet angular) musings, creating a strange sense of atmospheric dissonance. What’s most impressive is their use of melody and atmosphere to give respite from the often harsh onslaught, although the extent to which it can be considered a respite is debatable. For example, on album highlight “Rape Kit” anger fizzles into sadness, screams melt into cries and vocalist Megan Osztrosits displays some of her (criminally) underused and beautiful clean singing, resulting in the most emotionally draining song of the record.
But it’s the dichotomy between beauty and dissonance that prevails, as even in the calmer moments there’s an underlying sense of urgency and ugliness waiting to break through. Midway through “Rape Kit” the melodic lead is cut off for one sharp blast of feedback, almost as a reminder that this isn’t beautiful, or if it is it shouldn’t be. The same can be said for the random saxophone solo that ends and opens two tracks here, tauntingly deranged yet a reprieve in many ways.
My Life As A Woman is an exercise in the disgusting things festering at the backs of people’s minds, or at least, it probably is, it’s sort of hard to tell with all the noise.
